GA-7S748 Not Stable with 400Mhz DDR

[Clocker]

Had an interesting learning experience. It appears the Sis748 lets you run your ram out of synch with your Socket A processors FSB. I have a 266mhz FSB CPU and setting the RAM to 'Auto' in BIOS sets the ram speed to 400Mhz. I thought this was a bonus! NOT! After multiple tries, it appears that causes the system to become unstable to the point that no matter how many times I tried to install Vista, it would become corrupt.

All along I thought it was the SiI3512 controller card not being on the Vista HCL. But I appears that the memory speed was the problem.

BTW, the DDR400 memory worked fine in my other computer at the DDR400 speeds.

 

[Clocker]

Ummm. WTF. I THOUGHT it was working OK. Now it reboots when the install is almost complete. Same with WinXP SP2. This is the board that was pulled from my father-in-laws system that had the CPU die. Maybe there is more to that story than meets the eye. :-(

I have an IDE drive in there now too. So the SATA card is out of the picture. I just tried to delete the existing partition while in the XP installer, and the system just shuts down. wtf wtf wtf

 

[Mercutio]

My standard configuration with those boards is to use one Crucial or Rosewill (sigh) DDR/333 DIMM. I kinda sorta remember reading something about them being weird with some DDR/400 modules but I no longer remember the circumstances.

Anyway, those boards typically don't fail in any way but a total, "won't even spin fans" sort of way. I can't say I'm familiar with the symptoms you're describing.

 

[Clocker]

per my PM, now it just reboots during reinstall. I'll try pulling a dimm and going with just 512MB. The DIMMS are by SimpleTech.

 

[Clocker]

Now a WinXP install BSODs at prtmgr.sys during the install process (with one 512MB DIMM).

 

[mubs]

Are you sure your optical is ok? Many installation problems go back to bad opticals, bad optical cables or bad media. Could be just a coincidence along with suspected motherboard problems. I've had too many such coincidences to be skeptical.

 

[Clocker]

I'll have to give a different one a try....tomorrow. Thanks for the idea!

C

 

[Clocker]

Well, I tried another optical. Also, tried swapping between master and slave and switched the optical and HDD between IDE ports (just to see if the symptom would change). The failure mode is at least consistent now, when I go to select a partition to install XP on, the system just shuts off.

If I ever find the time to get my C2D system put together, I guess this Gigabyte board will be headed for the scrap heap.