Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Tuesday April 1 2003 07:37 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: Its PNY right now. Tom Brinkman suggested Samsung. Could someone post a url to a good reliable site that sells Samsung? I tried googling that and came up with lots of hits but when I would go to a site they wouldn't actually sell Samsung 2.5 memory. What about Kingston or Crucial? Are they okay? You can get Crucial online http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=RAM Mwave sells Kingston http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/index.hmx? Right now Corsair is highly regarded http://www.corsairmicro.com/ As long as you've found some acceptable timings for that PNY, why not just keep it? -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Thursday April 3 2003 01:03 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: On Tuesday 01 April 2003 10:17 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: As long as you've found some acceptable timings for that PNY, why not just keep it? Good point. My question is, am I losing performance though? That was the only issue concerning me. Well, since I'm sure the successful timings are more conservative, yes. But I'd guesstimate no more than 5 to 7%, and you'll only lose that during ram intensive operations. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 30 March 2003 11:53 pm, Carroll Grigsby wrote: Ronald: When I built this box two years ago, I bought the RAM from Mushkin. At the time, they were highly recommended on various hardware sites, but I haven't heard about them for a while. I was very pleased with the whole transaction, but things change; sadly, not always for the better. BTW, check your date setting. -- cmg Thanks for the reply. Yep, I made some changes in BIOS after flashing the latest update. I forgot to reset the date again. I'll do that the next time I reboot. :-) -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 02:14, Ronald J. Hall wrote: On Sunday 30 March 2003 11:53 pm, Carroll Grigsby wrote: BTW, check your date setting. -- cmg Thanks for the reply. Yep, I made some changes in BIOS after flashing the latest update. I forgot to reset the date again. I'll do that the next time I reboot. :-) (And to think that you were trying to be a day ahead of ME! Ha! NOT!) (g) -- Tue Apr 1 05:50:00 EST 2003 05:50:00 up 10 days, 17:37, 3 users, load average: 0.53, 0.39, 0.35 -- |____ | kuhn media australia| | / ,, /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | | .\__/ || | | |=| | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kuhn| | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | | ;/ / | | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389| | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU | -- linux user:267497 * MDK 9.1 * PC/Mac/Linux/Networking/Consulting machine no:194239 * RH 7.3 * Sales - Service - Support - Tutor -- ** This messages was composed on a 100% Microsoft free computer ** The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
I changed the memory settings in BIOS from spd - auto to 2.5 - manual. Hmm. I'm not sure what that does physically - my guess that it is slowing the memory so it is more in spec or more in tolerance to its requirements. It could be that your memory is just a tad out of tolerance vs. your motherboard - and the converse could also be true, that yuor motherboard could be just a wee bit out of spec with respect to the memory capabilities. Either way, the memoy settings seem to have fixed the problem. As to cpuburn - it runs a very tight loop. I would think that it runs entirely within the L1 processor cache (the loop is maybe 50 bytes long) and as such your memory may not be as big an issue. Samsung 2.5 memory. What about Kingston or Crucial? Are they okay? Crucial seems to be highly recommended. Not sure about Kingston. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 30 March 2003 11:15 pm, David E. Fox wrote: Hmm. I'm not sure what that does physically - my guess that it is slowing the memory so it is more in spec or more in tolerance to its requirements. It could be that your memory is just a tad out of tolerance vs. your motherboard - and the converse could also be true, that yuor motherboard could be just a wee bit out of spec with respect to the memory capabilities. Either way, the memoy settings seem to have fixed the problem. Tom Brinkman was kinda explaining it to me - seems auto/spd has your MB grab the specs from the Ram itself. So if the Ram is over-rating itself to the MB, then you could have problems. (I think I got this right). By going manually, you dicate to the Ram how its to run. Which, in a convoluted way is kinda what you were saying... Does that make any sense? :-) As to cpuburn - it runs a very tight loop. I would think that it runs entirely within the L1 processor cache (the loop is maybe 50 bytes long) and as such your memory may not be as big an issue. Yes, the man page explains how you can get it to focus on diff. areas of cache and ram. Very cool program. Crucial seems to be highly recommended. Not sure about Kingston. Thanks! -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Tuesday 01 April 2003 08:37 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: I started this thread a while back and had many positive replies as to what to do about my computer not being able to run cpuburn longer than about 2 mins or so. Right now, I can run memtest overnight and cpuburn (burnK6) for an hour with no errors or crashes. I changed the memory settings in BIOS from spd - auto to 2.5 - manual. Can I safely assume that (most likely) memory was my problem? Sure seems that way... Its PNY right now. Tom Brinkman suggested Samsung. Could someone post a url to a good reliable site that sells Samsung? I tried googling that and came up with lots of hits but when I would go to a site they wouldn't actually sell Samsung 2.5 memory. What about Kingston or Crucial? Are they okay? Thanks. Ronald: When I built this box two years ago, I bought the RAM from Mushkin. At the time, they were highly recommended on various hardware sites, but I haven't heard about them for a while. I was very pleased with the whole transaction, but things change; sadly, not always for the better. BTW, check your date setting. -- cmg Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
Ian Trickett wrote: .. If your memory is in 2 sticks, try taking one out. Also, try simply reseating them. Or swapping them over. I had a similar pbm recently but everything's ok now. My mo-bo actually has integrated video. I now get occasional `marks' on screen which I suspect are caused by a faulty memory chip. They consist of a few pixels which are the wrong color for a short time. Possibly, glitches like that in video memory have no further consequence whereas if they were in the code, Windows would go spare. It used to do that - before I swapped the chips. John _ Envie de discuter en live avec vos amis ? Télécharger MSN Messenger http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/m la 1ère messagerie instantanée de France Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Tuesday March 18 2003 04:34 pm, darklord wrote: On Monday 17 March 2003 10:30 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/mdoc/ref/ts-system-freeze.html Sorry, I just should'a posted that link in my first reply ;) No problem, I'll save that url and check it out in a bit. Wanted to tell you what happened yesterday. I installed lm-sensors and gkrellm to monitor temperatures and voltages. Got it setup and running, got alarms right away. The 3.3v is showing 6.4 volts all the time. I'm clueless as to why. I suspect the reported voltage is being doubled. It's surely wrong, because while some 3.3v ram does well up to 4v, anything much over that and it probly wouldn't even boot. How do the 12, 5, and cpu voltages look? ...are they steady? What does the bios say the 3.3v is at? Hopefully it's 3.3+ (3.4 or 3.5). Who makes the PSU? As to temperature - I took the case off, had gkrellm going, showing 114.4 degrees (F. not Celsius). I opened a shell and ran burnK6, and watched it. System locked up in less than 2 minutes, final temperature was 118.2 degrees at lockup. That should not really be the problem, should it? The only reason I refer to Celsius for computer temps is 'cause that's the prevailing convention. 114f = 46c, 118f = 48c, so heat is not the problem. Next likely culprits are L2 cache (on the cpu) and ram. Not neccesarily hardware failure, could be configuration. Are you running the cpu at default speed, and what's the FSB mhz? More likely the problem is that PNY ram. Make sure you're runnin it at bios defaults, which should be cas 3, and bank interleaving disabled. Disable the 'auto' or 'get specs from ram' (SMP) bios setting. The ram might be overstating it's specs. Brands like PNY and other low end vendors, including house brands and generics, often do. If you can, try different (better ;) ram. Try moving the sticks to different slots (even if you only have one stick), and swapping the order around. Clean the ram's contacts with a pencil eraser. For the L2 cache, and this could help the ram too, try running the system with the FSB underclocked. EG, if your FSB is 133mhz, drop it to 130mhz. If that still doesn't fix or improve the problem, then add some Vcore (cpu voltage). IIRC, your XP has a range of 1.55 to 1.75. Try it at 1.7 and even 1.75, the upper limit. Did you try mprime ? It'll stop on hardware errors, usually ram. See what you can find out about that PNY ram. You system should have a minimum of 7.5ns, cas2.5 ram. = 7ns, cas2 would be better. The PNY probly doesn't meet those minimum specs, even if it says it does. Ignore DDR333 and such, those are just general marketing labels. -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Monday 17 March 2003 10:30 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/mdoc/ref/ts-system-freeze.html Sorry, I just should'a posted that link in my first reply ;) No problem, I'll save that url and check it out in a bit. Wanted to tell you what happened yesterday. I installed lm-sensors and gkrellm to monitor temperatures and voltages. Got it setup and running, got alarms right away. The 3.3v is showing 6.4 volts all the time. I'm clueless as to why. As to temperature - I took the case off, had gkrellm going, showing 114.4 degrees (F. not Celsius). I opened a shell and ran burnK6, and watched it. System locked up in less than 2 minutes, final temperature was 118.2 degrees at lockup. That should not really be the problem, should it? Thanks much! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
Op Sunday 16 March 2003 04:02, schreef Ronald J. Hall: Okay, I'm still having some hardware problems. I installed and ran memtest overnight, about 24 passes with no errors. I grabbed and installed cpuburn 1.4 last night, then ran burnMMX. It won't run longer than 2 minutes before I get a full lockup that requires a hardware reset or powerdown and back up. That from a shell with X running and without. This is an AMD XP2100, 512megs DDR (PNY) Ram, Soyo Dragon Plus MB, Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4200, etc, etc, with nothing overclocked. The CPU has a 5 1/4, 3000 rpm fan/heatsink attached to it, and BIOS reports 50 degrees celsius for it, and 27 degrees Celsius for the system. Intense games cause crashes, some with direct references to memory. Example, Warcraft 3 gives this: --- This application has encountered a critical error: FATAL ERROR! Program: C:\Program Files\Warcraft III\war3.exe Exception:0xC005 (ACCESS_VIOLATION) at 0023:6F58A844 The instruction at '0x6F58A844' referenced memory at '0x7FF8FE63'. The memory could not be 'read'. --- The literature with cpuburn suggests that my CPU is not getting cooled enough but from what I've read, 50 degrees Celsius should be okay, right? So what does everyone else think? Sure could use some insight. (Tom Brinkman, you around anywhere? grin) PS Note that all the hardware is basically new, less than 3 months old. Roland , I' m not so sure that the indication of the cpu temp. is always so accurate . A good thing to try is when the machine locks up , reboot emmidiatly (so everything is still hot) , and run the test again . When it is the temperature which gives problems , it now should lock up even faster . a second thing is trying to switch memory as suggested by Ian . Good luck . Bart. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
Hi. On Sun 2003-03-16 at 00:01:29 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Should be fine at 50C. If your memory is in 2 sticks, try taking one out. If it still crashes, switch them! If it's ok you've found your problem. I doubt it is a memory problem. I am no hardware expert but had my share of misc. hardware problems and never had or heard of faulty memory causing immediate lock-ups. I agree with the docs which suggest either bad cooling (fan, bad heat dissipation, ...) or bad power supply (power supply unit, connector, motherboard, ...) are probably causes. Ronald, what kind of power supply do you have? 230W, 300W? (or whatever is standard where you come from ;) Make sure you,ve got good air circulation, esp. round your vid card - they can get real hot too. Agreed. A good test (not for the faint-hearted :-) is to run with open case and use a hair-dryer or alike (on cool setting - or whatever that might be called) in direction of the CPU and see if it makes a difference in how long it needs until the CPU locks up. What speed and timings are you running the memory at? Try slowing it down to CAS 2.5 or set it to a safer setting in BIOS Can this really be the cause of lock-ups? Never had that happen to me. From: Ronald J. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] [...] I grabbed and installed cpuburn 1.4 last night, then ran burnMMX. It won't run longer than 2 minutes before I get a full lockup that requires a hardware reset or powerdown and back up. That from a shell with X running and without. This is an AMD XP2100, 512megs DDR (PNY) Ram, Soyo Dragon Plus MB, Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4200, etc, etc, with nothing overclocked. The CPU has a 5 1/4, 3000 rpm fan/heatsink attached to it, and BIOS reports 50 degrees celsius for it, and 27 degrees Celsius for the system. [...] The literature with cpuburn suggests that my CPU is not getting cooled enough but from what I've read, 50 degrees Celsius should be okay, right? Well, I would put more credibility in the CPU lock-up than into what the BIOS is reporting. ;-) PS Note that all the hardware is basically new, less than 3 months old. HTH, Benjamin. pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Saturday March 15 2003 09:02 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: Okay, I'm still having some hardware problems. I installed and ran memtest overnight, about 24 passes with no errors. I grabbed and installed cpuburn 1.4 last night, then ran burnMMX. It won't run longer than 2 minutes before I get a full lockup that requires a hardware reset or powerdown and back up. Google: Raising skinny elephants is utterly boring. There's better ways to tryin shutdown before usin the panic button ;) That from a shell with X running and without. Weak motherboard, power supply, ram, among other things including bios (mis)configuration could be involved. Your mobo looks good but that's a very poor memory vendor. Try setting the ram to cas3 with bank interleaving disabled. Use lm_sensors and check frequently when the system is under varying to heavy load to see if the voltages are at or above spec and _stay steady_. See who made the PSU and check to see if it, and the cpu heatsink (your mobo is) are AMD appr'vd http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_4348,00.html This is an AMD XP2100, 512megs DDR (PNY) Ram, Soyo Dragon Plus MB, Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4200, etc, etc, with nothing overclocked. If you're using the proprietary nvidia driver, you should add 'mem=nopentium' to lilo.conf's append= line. Run 'lilo' and reboot. Another very good system test is prime95. ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/mprime2212.tar.gz D/l and extract that file to a dir by itself. Then in that dir run ./mprime -mand from the menu choose 17), the torture test. You should be able to complete that without stopping on hardware errors. Make sure you can before tryin cpuburn again. This mprime test takes many hours, so plan on overnite. The CPU has a 5 1/4, 3000 rpm fan/heatsink attached to it, and BIOS reports 50 degrees celsius for it, and 27 degrees Celsius for the system. Heatsink should have a 5000 rpm fan on it. The heatsink should be sitting on the cpu die with a thin layer of thermal grease. A thermal pad won't do, specially for Athlons. Heat could well be causing your problems. The cpu temp you see in bios is almost useless. Your system isn't fully booted into an OS yet, and is under low load. To see if better heatsink or case cooling is needed, take the case cover off and point a table fan into the case. If your system then runs without, or with little problem, you need a better hs-fan and/or case cooling. Do so soon, 'cause letting the system overheat (too many times) will make the system weaker from then on. Could even be permanently damaged (fubar'd). Intense games cause crashes, some with direct references to memory. Example, Warcraft 3 gives this: Games don't make good system tests or benchmarks, despite many people thinking they do. 'Sides, many crash all by themselves. The literature with cpuburn suggests that my CPU is not getting cooled enough but from what I've read, 50 degrees Celsius should be okay, right? Yes, if it's monitored when the system is fully booted up and working under load. No, when it's from bios. Keep in mind that the temps you're seeing are from an external probe, and are only indicative of approximate cpu temp. The cpu internal core temp is at least 10C, if not as much as 20C higher. XP's made since last July do have an internal diode to report core temp. Unfortunately there's no desktop motherboards that implement it, or the very few that do, at least not properly. PS Note that all the hardware is basically new, less than 3 months old. Still, check for dust bunnies ... and make sure that cpu heatsink isn't on a pad, and is on some grease. When you get cooling right, you should be able to run cpuburn's burnK7 (or burnK6 will do) for at least 15 to 20 minutes. Run for an hour, it means your system is bulletproof. You might need to give that PNY ram to somebody you don't like, and get some Crucial, Corsair, or Samsung cas2 ram ; -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 16 March 2003 09:14 am, Benjamin Pflugmann wrote: Hi. On Sun 2003-03-16 at 00:01:29 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Should be fine at 50C. If your memory is in 2 sticks, try taking one out. If it still crashes, switch them! If it's ok you've found your problem. I doubt it is a memory problem. I am no hardware expert but had my share of misc. hardware problems and never had or heard of faulty memory causing immediate lock-ups. I agree with the docs which suggest either bad cooling (fan, bad heat dissipation, ...) or bad power supply (power supply unit, connector, motherboard, ...) are probably causes. It sounds to me like poor cooling, but bad memory can easily be the problem too. What speed and timings are you running the memory at? Try slowing it down to CAS 2.5 or set it to a safer setting in BIOS Can this really be the cause of lock-ups? Never had that happen to me. Yes. Memory that might be fine at CAS 2.5 that doen't like CAS 2 could easily cause the symptoms described. -- Greg Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 16 March 2003 09:46 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: least 10C, if not as much as 20C higher. XP's made since last July do have an internal diode to report core temp. Unfortunately there's no desktop motherboards that implement it, or the very few that do, at least not properly. Many of the newer motherboards can read the diode, just lm_sensors does not always have a driver for the sensor chip. -- Greg Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 14:14, Benjamin Pflugmann wrote: Hi. snip Make sure you,ve got good air circulation, esp. round your vid card - they can get real hot too. Agreed. A good test (not for the faint-hearted :-) is to run with open case and use a hair-dryer or alike (on cool setting - or whatever that might be called) in direction of the CPU and see if it makes a difference in how long it needs until the CPU locks up. snip Actually no need to be too nervous - I've been running my PC without its back for the last 18 months [but no fan], after it started repeatedly shutting down or re-booting while running Win$ or during boot-up, all because of dicey CPU cooling. Now, no problems. Good luck! -- Douglas B. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
You mean some folks actually have cases on their computers? Seriously though, make sure that any vents, holes etc especially those in the back of the power supply are not blocked by dust, as this is often the only way to exhaust hot air from the case. If you do have a case fan, make sure it's working. Ian - Original Message - From: Douglas B. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Beginners' Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 1:19 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 14:14, Benjamin Pflugmann wrote: Hi. snip Make sure you,ve got good air circulation, esp. round your vid card - they can get real hot too. Agreed. A good test (not for the faint-hearted :-) is to run with open case and use a hair-dryer or alike (on cool setting - or whatever that might be called) in direction of the CPU and see if it makes a difference in how long it needs until the CPU locks up. snip Actually no need to be too nervous - I've been running my PC without its back for the last 18 months [but no fan], after it started repeatedly shutting down or re-booting while running Win$ or during boot-up, all because of dicey CPU cooling. Now, no problems. Good luck! -- Douglas B. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 16 March 2003 12:01 am, Ian Trickett wrote: Should be fine at 50C. If your memory is in 2 sticks, try taking one out. If it still crashes, switch them! If it's ok you've found your problem. Make sure you,ve got good air circulation, esp. round your vid card - they can get real hot too. What speed and timings are you running the memory at? Try slowing it down to CAS 2.5 or set it to a safer setting in BIOS Good luck! Ian I'll try that tomorrow. The video card has its own fan, I've left the slot next to it open (since the card is AGP you're not supposed to use the PCI slot next to it anyways, right?). I've got the fan from the P/S, as well as a case fan up front. 4 fans total, counting the CPU fan. Memory settings are left at the default (auto?) for the Soyo Dragon Plus MB. Thanks for the reply! -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 16 March 2003 04:24 am, Bart Salien wrote: Roland , Er, its Ronald (all my friends call me Ron) but Roland is okay - love the French hero of the same name (Durandana and Olifant!) (sp?) :-) I' m not so sure that the indication of the cpu temp. is always so accurate . A good thing to try is when the machine locks up , reboot emmidiatly (so everything is still hot) , and run the test again . When it is the temperature which gives problems , it now should lock up even faster . Well, going by that then I don't think its temperature. Why? Because I can and have run this system for 24 hours straight - no problems. I can run the games that give me problems after the system has been on for hours or minutes - and the games will lock up at different times - I've been able to play UT2003, for example, for 2-3 hours, then other times, can't play it for 2-3 minutes. cpuburn, on the other hand - *always* locks up within 2 minutes. a second thing is trying to switch memory as suggested by Ian . Gonna do that tomorrow for sure. Good luck . Bart. Thanks! -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 16 March 2003 09:14 am, Benjamin Pflugmann wrote: I doubt it is a memory problem. I am no hardware expert but had my share of misc. hardware problems and never had or heard of faulty memory causing immediate lock-ups. Okay, just to be clear, the immediate (2 minutes or less) lockup is with cpuburn only - normally the system sits and runs for hours and hours. Some games segfault out (and the time varies there). I agree with the docs which suggest either bad cooling (fan, bad heat dissipation, ...) or bad power supply (power supply unit, connector, motherboard, ...) are probably causes. Ronald, what kind of power supply do you have? 230W, 300W? (or whatever is standard where you come from ;) A less than 3 months old 350 watt power supply. Agreed. A good test (not for the faint-hearted :-) is to run with open case and use a hair-dryer or alike (on cool setting - or whatever that might be called) in direction of the CPU and see if it makes a difference in how long it needs until the CPU locks up. I think I will try running with the case off to see if it does make a difference. HTH, Benjamin. Thanks for the advice! -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
On Sunday 16 March 2003 09:46 am, Tom Brinkman wrote: Google: Raising skinny elephants is utterly boring. There's better ways to tryin shutdown before usin the panic button ;) Well, I tried to kill out of my Xserver using control alt backspace but that didn't work so I tried control alt Fx (fill in numbers 1 thru 10 for x) but it wouldn't let me leave. I also tried the venerable control alt delete but no go there either. Locked up tighter than a tap washer. grin So...was there something else I could have done before hitting the hardware switches? Thanks! Weak motherboard, power supply, ram, among other things including bios (mis)configuration could be involved. Your mobo looks good but that's a very poor memory vendor. Try setting the ram to cas3 with bank interleaving disabled. Use lm_sensors and check frequently when the system is under varying to heavy load to see if the voltages are at or above spec and _stay steady_. See who made the PSU and check to see if it, and the cpu heatsink (your mobo is) are AMD appr'vd http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_4348,0 0.html I'll go there and check that. If you're using the proprietary nvidia driver, you should add 'mem=nopentium' to lilo.conf's append= line. Run 'lilo' and reboot. I'll try that as well... Another very good system test is prime95. ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/mprime2212.tar.gz D/l and extract that file to a dir by itself. Then in that dir run ./mprime -mand from the menu choose 17), the torture test. You should be able to complete that without stopping on hardware errors. Make sure you can before tryin cpuburn again. This mprime test takes many hours, so plan on overnite. Ditto Heatsink should have a 5000 rpm fan on it. The heatsink should be sitting on the cpu die with a thin layer of thermal grease. A thermal pad won't do, specially for Athlons. Looks like I'll need to upgrade that then. I did use thermal grease, and not a pad. I hear they deterioate after awhile (one of your messages! smile). Heat could well be causing your problems. The cpu temp you see in bios is almost useless. Your system isn't fully booted into an OS yet, and is under low load. To see if better heatsink or case cooling is needed, take the case cover off and point a table fan into the case. If your system then runs without, or with little problem, you need a better hs-fan and/or case cooling. Do so soon, 'cause letting the system overheat (too many times) will make the system weaker from then on. Could even be permanently damaged (fubar'd). Gonna try that as well. Games don't make good system tests or benchmarks, despite many people thinking they do. 'Sides, many crash all by themselves. I know, just trying to give some examples of whats going on. Yes, if it's monitored when the system is fully booted up and working under load. No, when it's from bios. Keep in mind that the temps you're seeing are from an external probe, and are only indicative of approximate cpu temp. The cpu internal core temp is at least 10C, if not as much as 20C higher. XP's made since last July do have an internal diode to report core temp. Unfortunately there's no desktop motherboards that implement it, or the very few that do, at least not properly. Okay, I got it. Still, check for dust bunnies ... and make sure that cpu heatsink isn't on a pad, and is on some grease. When you get cooling right, you should be able to run cpuburn's burnK7 (or burnK6 will do) for at least 15 to 20 minutes. Run for an hour, it means your system is bulletproof. You might need to give that PNY ram to somebody you don't like, and get some Crucial, Corsair, or Samsung cas2 ram ; I hear ya grin Thanks for the reply Tom! -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest
Should be fine at 50C. If your memory is in 2 sticks, try taking one out. If it still crashes, switch them! If it's ok you've found your problem. Make sure you,ve got good air circulation, esp. round your vid card - they can get real hot too. What speed and timings are you running the memory at? Try slowing it down to CAS 2.5 or set it to a safer setting in BIOS Good luck! Ian - Original Message - From: Ronald J. Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: MDK-Newbie List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 10:02 PM Subject: [newbie] cpuburn and memtest Okay, I'm still having some hardware problems. I installed and ran memtest overnight, about 24 passes with no errors. I grabbed and installed cpuburn 1.4 last night, then ran burnMMX. It won't run longer than 2 minutes before I get a full lockup that requires a hardware reset or powerdown and back up. That from a shell with X running and without. This is an AMD XP2100, 512megs DDR (PNY) Ram, Soyo Dragon Plus MB, Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti4200, etc, etc, with nothing overclocked. The CPU has a 5 1/4, 3000 rpm fan/heatsink attached to it, and BIOS reports 50 degrees celsius for it, and 27 degrees Celsius for the system. Intense games cause crashes, some with direct references to memory. Example, Warcraft 3 gives this: --- This application has encountered a critical error: FATAL ERROR! Program: C:\Program Files\Warcraft III\war3.exe Exception: 0xC005 (ACCESS_VIOLATION) at 0023:6F58A844 The instruction at '0x6F58A844' referenced memory at '0x7FF8FE63'. The memory could not be 'read'. --- The literature with cpuburn suggests that my CPU is not getting cooled enough but from what I've read, 50 degrees Celsius should be okay, right? So what does everyone else think? Sure could use some insight. (Tom Brinkman, you around anywhere? grin) PS Note that all the hardware is basically new, less than 3 months old. -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
