Really odd memory problem.

Rilot · 13 Jul 2006 at 15:15

I've just added an extra 1GB of RAM the the missus' PC. She now has 4 x 512MB Geil Value sticks.
I can run Memtest86 all day long with no errors
I can run Prime95 for 24hrs+ with no errors
I can run 3DMark loops for as long as I like
I can run Fear for as long as I like

When she runs World of Warcraft, the game crashes after a couple of minutes.

Take the 2 new sticks out and it runs fine.
Swap the sticks around so that the 2 new sticks are the only ones in the PC and it runs fine.

This is what I have tried:

Re-install OS plus games
Clocks all back to defaults
Test each stick individually
Slacken timings in BIOS

Nothing will stop WoW crashing. The bizarre thing is that nothing else crashes and that WoW works fine with 1GB. I'm thinking I have a memory problem but I just can't work out how to get it to error in such a way that I start to diagnose the problem.

Any ideas?

Rest of spec:

Venice 3000+
Abit KN7 Ultra
Onboard sound
HIS Radeon X1800XT
Akasa PaxPower 460W PSU
2 x HDDs
1 x DVD-RW

ademcg · 13 Jul 2006 at 16:05

Does WoW report a "fatal error" type message or give a post crash reason or error log ?

I had a similar problem with Guild Wars a few months back, "unable to read Memory address XXXXXXX" blah, blah, blah.

It turned out to be the actual game and something a miss with the latest update of the time.

you have tried the obvious, reinstalling everything and memtest each stick individually anything similar on the WoW forums ?

Rilot · 13 Jul 2006 at 18:25

No errors. It's a hard lock of the entire machine.

Cyber-Mav · 13 Jul 2006 at 21:55

do this, run super pi in a constant loop, the 32m test. i used a program called pi-loop which did the trick for me.

turns out the northbridge was the problem, it was heating up loads under the stress of 4 sticks etc. that was the problem on my nforce2 board. had to reduce the fsb down to 372mhz for complete stability.

Cyber-Mav · 13 Jul 2006 at 21:56

forgot to add, if it is a nforce 2 mobo use goldmemory to test the ram, i found that it detected errors where memtest could not find any.

Rilot · 14 Jul 2006 at 00:00

It's an nforce4 board.

I think I've sussed the problem. The machine didn't like 4 sticks at 400MHz so I've dropped them down to 333MHz and all is now fine.

Slight loss of performance but nothing that will worry the missus.

Minstadave · 14 Jul 2006 at 00:44

Rilot said:
It's an nforce4 board.

I think I've sussed the problem. The machine didn't like 4 sticks at 400MHz so I've dropped them down to 333MHz and all is now fine.

Slight loss of performance but nothing that will worry the missus.

Thats odd, have you forced it to 2T aswell?

Depending on your boards settings, you can slacken MAL and Preamble to 9 and 8 respectively, that should help stability