Abit UL8

New Mobo, memory Memtest ? Heres part of the story from another post

I bought a new ABIT UL8 939 board. (Yes with the ULI 1889 chipset)

ABIT UL8
2 X512 PC 3200 Super Talent
160 Gig SATA Seagate
3200+ Venice
ATI 9500 Pro
Seasonic S-12 430 W PSU
DVD-R and DVD-CDRW, Floppy
Antec Sonata case
(The case and Vid card are the only old components)

Initially posted and like a dummy I had to fiddle with the BIOS right away, started installing Win XP, Missed the F6 prompt..... but that didn't matter as I soon got a BSOD. Powered down using case power switch

Cleared CMOS.... now when I hit power switch, fans spin and the motherboard lights up, but no post....and it won't power down with the case switch, I have to turn the PSU off in the Rear.

That was then and now....Well I found a problem with my ATX 4 pin power (Yes I did not snap it all the way in), that cured the power switch problem, and allowed it to post. But it would hang checking dim (Whatever that is) so I took the Super Talent out and put in some Kingston, ...no post. I put the Super Talent back in in the outboard slots this time, and got Memtest 86+ (Ver. 1.65) running right now.

I have made three complete passes with no errors

Athlon 64 (0.09) 2046 Mhz
L1 Cache: 128K 16766MB/s
L2 Cache: 512K 4165MB/s
Memory : 1024M 2049MB/s
Chipset : Ali M1989 (ECC : disabled)
Settings : RAM : 170 Mhz (DDR341) / CAS : 2-3-3-6 / Dual Channel (128 Bits)

Is it normal for these settings in Memtest? ( I think I have optimal defaults set in BIOS)

It is 87% thru the fourth pass with no errors. how many passes are recommended? I think I will leave it all night.

Ideas?

I'd consider both the ULi chipset and the Super Talent RAM to be very, very suspect. You do at least have an excellent power supply. Maybe I'm just remembering the bad old days so far as the chipset, because I've seen some excellent reviews of the M1695, but I thought I knew every brand of RAM out there, and I've never heard of Super Talent. If it were me, I'd put the Kingston back in -- that I know I can trust. Good luck with the tests. Letting it run overnight sounds like a good plan. Uh, why is your RAM at 170MHz? That's an odd speed. It might make some sense if you were overclocking and using dividers, but since you're just trying to get the system running at all, I assume you're not doing that.

I had some other Super Talent in my NF7-S and it worked real well so I had bought some of their CAS 2 stuff to try and right now I have 2 x 512 Super Talent Cas 2 or 2 x 256 Kingston Cas 3.

I think that 170 is how it is in the BIOS, I have the Optimized defaults in them... or maybe the fail safe I don't recall right now. I thought I could fiddle with that once it is up and running.

Why it was at 170 was one of my quetions, I have not used this program all that much and don'trecall the last time I saw it.

I have been working on this system with the old trial and error method, clearing CMOS, changing Ram and vid cards, and so forth.

Right now I am back to my more or less original configuration.

ABIT UL8
2 X512 PC 3200 Super Talent
160 Gig SATA Seagate
3200+ Venice
ATI 9500 Pro
Seasonic S-12 430 W PSU
DVD-R and DVD-CDRW, Floppy
Antec Sonata case

I had to lay off for three days as I needed To format and Clean install Win XP home on one of the Warden's computers and It then used the Win XP CD I had purchased for this comp. I bought Win XP Pro 64 to replace it though. (Yes I buy one for each comp)

Anyway after much fiddling with the Bios I have it installing on the UL8 as I write this.

This is what I did today to set up the Bios. I loaded the failsafe defaults, that did not work but I adjusted the date, reloaded the optimized defaults, went into SoftMenu and change the Dram voltage from (-2.5) to (0.0) it is at 2.60, I changed the chipset voltage to Default +2%, In the Dram settings I changed to "By SPD"

Just little differences, but they seemed to have worked, Windows just finished formatting, and I just saw the XP 64 splash screen so it looks as if the install will be done soon enough.

I'll update again if it is a complete success.

This is BIOS version 1 so.... what did I expect?

Well took me awhile to get a working Lan driver, but I love my new comp All is well now.