nForce2 and PC3200

[dwellman]

Maybe some of you remember the good old days with nForce2 Ultra and Athlon XP.

I have a Shuttle AN35N Ultra bequethed to me. So the Ballistix PC3200 I tried barely works. I also have an MSI K7N2 Delta2 that doesn't work at all with it. But back to the Shuttle.

With a cleared CMOS (using the reset switch method) the computer will boot, and continue to boot as long as I never enter CMOS setup. If I enter CMOS setup at any time, even if I change nothing, the board will not post until I reset the CMOS using the reset switch.

Item: This memory requires 2.8v
Item: This board offer 2.7v max
Item: 2-2-2-8, 2-2-2-11, 2.5-3-3-8, 3-4-4-8. 3-4-4-11 timings did not work at 2.7v at any memory clock (200DDR, 333DDR, or 400DDR)
Item: Skipping CMOS setup, altogether, the system runs this memory (as reported by CPU-Z) with 2-2-2-8 at 400 DDR, unknown voltage.

Conclusion: certain BIOS images on nForce2 chipsets have bug which occludes stable high-performance memory (memory needing more than 2.6v) operation.

Valid conclusion? Any of you come accross behaviour like this?

 

[Mondoman]

No, not really a valid conclusion. I'd state it this way: RAM that doesn't meet the DDR standard by not working at 2.5V won't work properly on some systems that are designed for memory that meets the DDR standard.

It seems that your Ballistix RAM is defective -- return it to Crucial for replacement under warranty.

Check out this post for more info: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1249881#1249881

 

[woodchuk]

You jogged my memory, I remember hearing Ballistix didn't work
with Nf2 boards, while the cheap Crucial works just fine, albeit with
slower timings.