I am not a hardware expert. I hope Liquidsnak will see this and take a look. I don't want to steer you wrong. If LiquidSnak or one of the hardware Gurus does not see this tomorrow, please shoot me a visitors message (VM).
I was told to give a shot at assisting you and here's my two cents:
Some motherboards, while they have four RAM slots, really don't play well with the fourth slot occupied.
Given you have Windows 7 32-bit, I see absolutely no reason for you to have more than two sticks of RAM (given 2gb per stick) anyways. a 32-bit OS does not have enough address space for more than ~3.5gb of RAM.
My solution is to run 2x2GB and leave it at that, until you upgrade to a 64-bit OS. Even then, 4GB is enough for most people. Hell, I only have 4GB and have yet to hit the ceiling, even with 1080p blu-ray recoding.
Jonathan...thanks for you reply and willingness to assist.
However, it seems you may have missed my more recent post https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...ml#post1191217 where I indicated that I am back to only 2 1gb sticks and have since gotten rid of ANY bsod's. I am just back to my most trying and frustrating issue, the micro-freezes.
Any advice on that?
Thanks again,
David
edit...and let me just add, that these freezes tend to occur more often when doing CPU intensive work such as video editing and other things (different programs), and it takes MUCH longer to recover. A couple of minutes or more at times. These freezes are a daily occurrence. Absolutely nothing specific is triggering them. I have even been playing winamp in the background during these heavy CPU intensive processes, and the music will literally get stuck and play at a stuck point until I let it recover. Normally, I would just reboot, but again, it ALWAYS recovers.
Jonathan,
To further explain the "micro-freezes", I can be in the middle of opening or viewing a web-page, listening to music, playing movies, as it is...do anything on the computer, and it will freeze. Generally speaking, the mouse is still responsive, or atleast in the beginning of a freeze. Ctrl-alt-del, is non-responsive, but only at first. Basically, once I try to get to the task manager, it will get there, but not until the computer has gone through it's cycle if you will, or as I call it, a micro-freeze. It simply is non-responsive. Generally, music will keep playing, but any attempt to do ANYTHING on the computer is non responsive until the system comes out of the stalled, frozen state. As it was described in an earlier post, it is like a CPU hang. It is totally random, but more frequent when doing CPU intensive work and with heavier CPU loads, it takes longer to recover. Minimum time to recover with low CPU load...I would say 10 seconds. High CPU load, 2 minutes or more. No data, work, video encoding etc...is ever corrupted. I can be raring files together, have the freeze, it will continue to rar my files. I check them, and they unzip just fine. Man, I don't know, just typing this, it could freeze up. Again, NO bsod's since taking out the added RAM.
No, I have not ran Prime95. I know it is a stress test, but frankly, I am not sure what that will tell me when it is not really a diagnostic tool, but more of a stress test. However, if you think it can provide some info, then I can run it.
Liquidsnak asked me to provide some detailed information in an earlier post, but he has not yet looked at the information I provided.
Does this help?
Anyways, let me know what you think.
Thanks again,
David
Sorry to hear your having problems.
Micro freezes can be caused by several things, some tests will give us more information.
The Prime95 test is a good idea, this will tell us if the CPU can handle being stressed, if it fails under a heavy load we can start looking at it a bit closer.
Since you have done most of the preliminary RAM testing, with a little more information we can do a couple of tests on the RAM and memory controller (NB).
It is common that 4 RAM cards will require a NB voltage bump, depending on your RAM and NB voltages this may help the micro freezes as well, even with only 2 RAM cards installed now.
If you can give us some more details on your system it will help us with possibilities and suggestions.
Please fill in your 'System Specs' in the lower left of any of your posts, complete as much as possible.
The CPUZ report can be useful, but the tabs gives us system information that is useful and easy to quickly read, please post the CPUZ snips using the win7 snipping tool.
Post a snip of the CPU, Mainboard, Memory, and SPD tabs. Get one SPD tab of the old RAM and one SPD tab of the new RAM.
For posting the information , enter 'Snipping tool' in the Start button > Search box, hit enter. Select the area you want to post and save to a convenient place.
How to Post a Screenshot in Seven Forums
Go to your BIOS and give us the DRAM and NB voltages. The CPU voltage will be in the CPUZ CPU tab.
Have you been checking your temperatures?
Use Speed Fan (newest version) or Real Temp (since you had an issue with speedfan use RealTemp), run one of these and check the CPU temps when at idle, under load and/or testing.
Let us know the minimum and maximum temps you get.
Have you done any overclocking?
Last edited by Dave76; 26 Jan 2011 at 07:05.
Dave...first, thank you for your willingness to dig into this.
My system is overclocked. This is the same PC I have had for several years, which originally was overclocked to the exact same settings as it was when I initially had XP on it. I upgraded to W7 just last year, and it was shortly after the install, that I started having problems. Near the end of my 3 or so years running XP (same install the entire time), I was having some issues. As I recall, I seemed to have an IRQ conflict between my Areca RAID controller and my graphics card. Hell, it has been so long, I can't remember. Anyways...
I update my system specs. I have attached the CPUZ info, but only with my current RAM (two 1gb dimms - the original RAM, not the new identical sticks I bought to add later). Frankly, the 2gb of ram is enough, so if it is okay with you, I would rather not even troubleshoot by adding the additional ram into the mix (per your request to take a CPUZ snip of the new RAM).
Bios Info:
FSB (NB) 1.38V
DRAM 2.0V
CPU Temp 44C
Board 45C
MCP 73C (googled this and I think this is in range for the 680i SLI mobo)
Using Nvidias temp/voltage monitoring, idle temp, 47C, 100% CPU stress, 59C.
Going to run Prime95 now...
Last edited by djdrock; 26 Jan 2011 at 19:28.
Makes it easier with the system info.
Hopefully the Prime95 test will let us know the condition of the CPU.
No problem with the RAM, I wouldn't recommend running both 2X1GB sets now. You might want to swap out the old set for the new set at some point, let's leave it as is for now.
You will have to consider putting everything back to stock settings at some point, depending on how the initial testing goes.
What is the age of the CPU, RAM, PSU (brand name and model also), graphics card and mobo?
I ran prime95 just under 20 hours. No errors at all on the log. My CPU, mobo, ram is about 3-4 years old. It is homebuilt. GPU brand new. Just put it in a few weeks ago hoping it might be part of the problem. It is not. :-(
What should I do next. Clock it at regular speeds? Do you think the voltage/timing etc...are all okay as they are?
Thanks again,
David
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