RAM for P3V4X

[Dave H]

When I first built my 'puter a little over a year ago I put in two 128 meg sticks of EMS HSDRAM, and it ran great. One of those sticks died, so I got two sticks of Mushkin 150 Mhz RAM, but it was slower than the HSDRAM.
Foolishly, I did not put the air conditioning in upstairs and got a registry error one day after which only one stick of the Mushkin RAM showed up. Assuming (incorrectly) that one of them had died,
I ordered and installed one 256 meg stick of Crucial CAS2 RAM. It ran ok at first, but then more registry errors. I think the clockgen chip must have been getting hot and making things unstable (I was running at 150 FSB) because the second DIMM slot would work, then not work. I tried different combinations of slot usage with the different sticks until Windows (98SE) imploded. During this period, the Crucial stick worked less and less, and always seemed hot when I took it out; this makes me think it can't handle the 3.47V on that bus.
I want 256 megs of RAM on one stick; I am looking at the Mushkin Rev3 CAS2 RAM. Other than looking at some people's equipment listings I haven't seen any info on what is currently the best RAM for this board and wish some input! When I built this box EMS and Mushkin were the best you could use, and now they are one. Is this still true or does someone else have a leg up?
Thanks for your input!

[thematrix]

From reading around the net, Mushkin, and Corsair appear to be top of the line when it comes to memory. Tom's Hardware likes to use Wichmanworx memory (German brand I believe), and Mushkin. However, when you are looking at price, they are definitely the most expensive. A much cheaper alternative that does CAS3 PC150 is KingMax (PC133 @CAS2). It's reported to get to 160MHz @CAS3 for significantly less money than Muskin Rev3 and top of the line Corsair modules. I've seen Tonicom selling PC166 @CAS3, but have not seen any reviews validating it. I play with various hardware, and admit I don't have the latest and greatest, but I do have the KingMax PC150 256MB module and it works nicely on the board. I haven't ran any benchmarks on my system to validate the memory's performance. I'm trying to find the right heatsink for the ICS chip so that I can overclock my darn celeron 667 above 1000 MHz.

Hope this helps.

[Dave H]

I knew there was another brand of RAM that did very well in these boards and you mentioned it--Corsair. I've not heard of the German RAM; I'll have to go over to Tom's and check it out.
I actually have a heatsink/fan mounted on my clockgen chip, but I've read that doing so can actually inject noise into the chip--not a good thing! I also now question if it is doing that good a job in light of what happened recently and the fact that I have never gotten into Windows above 155 FSB, and it was flaky there.
I am going to switch to mounting a piece of heatsink directly to the chip with small drops of super glue on diagonal corners and Arctic Silver compound on the rest of the chip, and then mounting a fan to the back of the case so that it blows across the heatsink.
That will get rid of any noise and I also now feel it will provide better cooling. We'll see!
Thanks for the info,
Dave H

[Bort]

I have read around about Kingmax PC150 memory, including the review on this very site. I bought some solely on the basis it would run at 133MHz at CAS2. Unfortunately when I got it home and put it in my P3V4X it would only run at CAS3. Even at 124 or 126 MHz it only did CAS3.

Maybe I got a dud module, because everywhere I have read they should be capable of more performance.

[Powermike]

@Dave H

I often read about registry errors occuring with the P3V4X, most were caused by Not-Asus-Slockets. Do you use a FCPGA-Slot1-Adaptor? Maybe you were a bit lucky with your old VC-RAM and now get the errors typical for any other memory combined with a Non-Asus-Slocket...

...by the way, I wasn't able to run FSB 150 MHz without upping 3,3V to 3,6V on the mainboard using the undocumented jumper, even using PC150 memory (MGI)...

Powermike

[-==L=a=N=c=E==-]

Im running two sticks of 2X128 Kingmax PC-133 CL3 at 146-148 CL2 and i have never had a problem with em...

things to note about the P3V4X memmory timings.
Dont use the "By SPD" option to detect the ram speeds, manually set them, or use the "7ns 146Mhz" options, which will set all timings to 2,2,2,5...

Also, for performance sake, if you had it "by spd", depending on what type of ram it is, depends on what interleaving sould be set at. I remeber that VCsdrarm and HSDRAM only ran at 2-way, but with all the other types of SDRAM on the market, you could run your ram at 4-way interleaving.
The use of programs like Beta4w.com and HODA's registry tweakers came in handy here to set it up your self.

Try it, youll be surprised.

[Dave H]

I currently have a slot 1 600EB, so no sloket worries; I have purchased an ASUS 370-DL for switching to an FC-PGA chip when I upgrade.
I'm interested to see people running Kingmax RAM; when I first started coming to OC Oz people weren't having good luck with it on the P3V4X as I remember (and I'm open to being wrong).
I never got around to playing with the interleaving; about the time I would have started with that I started spending my time on a medical site due to impending surgery.
Do you know if the new stuff from Mushkin will do the 4-way interleaving? How about their PC-150 CAS3? I downloaded HODA's utility, and will see about the other one.
Thanks for that input!

[Powermike]

My MGI PC150-CL2 Memory runs at 150 MHz FSB with SPD setting in BIOS. 4-way interleaving and 2-2-2-5 timings are set automatically , don't need any tools for that...

[PersianImmortal]

My Kingmax 128MB PC150 RAM runs at 2-2-2-5, 4-way interleave, Read Latch Delay 0.0. It's been running stably now at that speed for around 6 months - but I can't guarantee evey stick of this RAM will make that speed (as can be seen from the posts above). Excellent RAM for the price tho

[thematrix]

I have the 256M KingMax PC150 module. In the bios, when set to by SPD, the system reads it as CL2. The KingMax site says this module is 332 @150, and CL2 @133 and lower. The module pcb versions says 1.0. I don't run any memory tweaks, nor do benchmarks to verify how high this module can go. I paid $86 USD about 6 weeks ago, and now see it running about $45 USD! Darnit...I hate it when I buy stuff too soon!

Btw, you can use the MSI 6905 v2.3 (flip chip ready and dual cpu capable) slot 1 adapter on the p3v4x. It works well. It's a cheaper alternative than the Asus adapter. I run all my flip chips off this adapter on all sorts of different boards from Shuttle, Abit, Asus, and Gigabyte and found it to work flawlessly.

originally posted by Bort

I have read around about Kingmax PC150 memory, including the review on this very site. I bought some solely on the basis it would run at 133MHz at CAS2. Unfortunately when I got it home and put it in my P3V4X it would only run at CAS3. Even at 124 or 126 MHz it only did CAS3.

Did you verify the settings by the "set by SPD" in the bios? Does it indicate the 222 setting? If it doesn't, check the part# on the KingMax site to verify you have the correct memory module. Perhaps it could be a mislabeled PC133 module. Does the pcb version say 1.0? I believe the modules are guaranteed and you may want to get it exchanged by KingMax or your vendor whom you purchased it from.