B2 Phenom + 8GB ram = BSOD

[suraswami]

Is there a issue with B2 Phenom's memory controller? Whenever I add 8GB of ram (all same brand and speed Crucial 6400 4 x 2gb sticks), I get BSOD (PageFault_in_nonPagedarea, Disk.sys etc) when ever I open an application that accesses mem settings like HWMonitor, CPUZ. More prominently VMWare. If the total virtual boxes memory is below 6 GB I don't get BSOD. If its more then boom.

How I found this? I was struggling with my new server for last week or so (along with my broken back). I had this spare Phenom 9500 and thought I will put it on a server and play with VMWare. My aim was to fill in all 4 slots with 2GB sticks each to get 8GB. I can install any OS with 8GB system mem (W2K3 32/64, XP 64). but moment I do the above then dies.

If I put 2 x 2gb + 2 x 1gb it works perfectly. Same goes with 3 x 2gb. The moment I add 1 more GB then dies.

So Last night I bought a Phenom 8450 and installed and all the problems described above went away. No issues till now, but have to test more.

Boards used Asus M3N78-VM, Gigabyte some 780G new version one then older ECS A770M board. Out of which the ECS is the damn good and cool running one, followed by Gigabyte. Asus is shit.

So is this related to the B2 TLB? The 9500 is a retail kit and I hope AMD will give me a replacement.

Anybody else have this kind of issue?

 

[Castiel]

Do you have a 64Bit OS?

 

[suraswami]

Do you have a 64Bit OS?

yup, tried both 32 and 64 bit as mentioned before.

 

[Castiel]

yup, tried both 32 and 64 bit as mentioned before.

Sorry, I must of skimmed over it.

Edit:Have you looked up the ERROR code from the BSOD, to see if it means something special. I have found that multiple websites give different results.

And does the BIOS see all the memory?

 

[erocker]

Have you tried changing the memory hole remap option in the bios?

 

[suraswami]

Sorry, I must of skimmed over it.

Edit:Have you looked up the ERROR code from the BSOD, to see if it means something special. I have found that multiple websites give different results.

And does the BIOS see all the memory?

Yes Bios and OS sees all mem. Almost same error 0x0000050 then bunch of codes. I googled but no info. I will post the exact errors this evening.

Have you tried changing the memory hole remap option in the bios?

Its enabled in the bios on all boards I have tried.

 

[suraswami]

I get the same error even with the new processor but not that frequently. Here is the error

Bugcheck String: 0x00000050 (0xfffffadf4050d9e8, 0x0000000000000000, 0xfffffadf2940c290, 0x0000000000000000)
Comment: 0x00000050 (0xfffffadf4050d9e8, 0x0000000000000000, 0xfffffadf2940c290, 0x0000000000000000)

 

[suraswami]

can someone please help me on this? tired of searching my nuts (wifey kicking me harder and harder daily).

 

[Kei]

How much voltage are you running to the ram, and more importantly how much voltage are you running to the Northbridge. Also what speed are you trying to run the ram at? If I remember correctly you'll need to set it to 800Mhz and not 1066Mhz because of how much ram you're using. You may be able to get away with 1066Mhz (some do), but you may not so give that a try too.

With that much ram you will need a little more than normal voltage wise so give that a try and let us know what happens. Hopefully the kicking will stop

Kei

 

[suraswami]

How much voltage are you running to the ram, and more importantly how much voltage are you running to the Northbridge.

With that much ram you will need a little more than normal voltage wise so give that a try and let us know what happens. Hopefully the kicking will stop

Kei

Thanks. I did all the above mentioned, increase cpu voltage, mem voltage, nb voltage, HT voltage and even dropped mem speed to DDR2 667 and loosened the timings.

Called AMD and created a RMA for the 9500. They say they haven't heard such thing, but will test the proc once they get it. But why on the 8450 too? I have cleared the cmos and put everything to default and have to go home to check if there was any BSODs.

 

[Ketxxx]

Sounds like your mobo may not be fully compatible with the RAM you chose. Picking RAM is far from easy when you want to fill all DIMM slots, you MUST make sure your memory is supported across all DIMMs properly. Check the memory QVL list for your mobo and update the BIOS to the latest available if you haven't already.

 

[suraswami]

Sounds like your mobo may not be fully compatible with the RAM you chose. Picking RAM is far from easy when you want to fill all DIMM slots, you MUST make sure your memory is supported across all DIMMs properly. Check the memory QVL list for your mobo and update the BIOS to the latest available if you haven't already.

Thanks, I did. Mem is Crucial 6400 CAS6 basic sticks. All 4 are matched ones running with same SPDs.

Infact on Crucial's website I found that the memory has been validated on the exact board models (Asus, giga and ecs) I mentioned before.

Anyway I remembered that I bought a extended warranty from Frys on the CPU, so I took the CPU along with the RMA info from AMD and they exchanged for a new proc. I was hoping for something better, but I ended up getting a 9550. It looks like stable for now. I can open all 4 vms which take nearly about 7gb of mem.

I will do more testing and update this thread.

Thanks all.

 

[afberendsen]

Same problem here. Same CPU, same version, same step. Kernei is 2.6.218.8 64-bits. Mobo is Asus M2N-SLI DELUXE. Using 8GB and Athlon works. Using Phenom with 4GB works. Using Phenom with 8GB, system crash at the beginning with a message regarding sync but full text uses more than 60 lines. If you need someone else to inform AMD, please let me know your bug id and I'll my problems.

 

[DaveR]

I have a Phenom 9350e and i am experiencing exactly the same symptoms, running 6GB works perfectly but when I up it to 8GB I intermittantly get the BSOD (running XP 64).

 

[Steevo]

The extra memory does place a large strain on the memory controller, try upping the voltage to the CPU HT and memory.


Does it fail memtest? It is also possible you have a bad stick, and or the timings are wrong for that much memory, with most going to 4Gb from 2 requires the CAS to be relaxed, and the drive moved to 2T. Perhaps with 8GB you need to relax it more.



There could be hundreds of things other than the chip, considering these are also used in servers with 16+GB of memory, it is more likely the RAM, timings, or board having issues.

 

[afberendsen]

But why using a Athlon, with the same 8GB of RAM, Linux loads w/o any problems? Right now I'm using that machine that particular machine with Athlon, of course, and 8GB of RAM:

# cat cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 107
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2310.620
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch
bogomips : 4621.24
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

processor : 1
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 107
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2310.620
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch
bogomips : 4621.05
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps


# cat meminfo
MemTotal: 8170488 kB
MemFree: 315444 kB
Buffers: 1195552 kB
Cached: 2253916 kB
SwapCached: 24392 kB
Active: 3438944 kB
Inactive: 2888040 kB
Active(anon): 2413404 kB
Inactive(anon): 475796 kB
Active(file): 1025540 kB
Inactive(file): 2412244 kB
Unevictable: 3816 kB
Mlocked: 3816 kB
SwapTotal: 20217840 kB
SwapFree: 19946972 kB
Dirty: 872 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 2873524 kB
Mapped: 836180 kB
Slab: 591716 kB
SReclaimable: 533888 kB
SUnreclaim: 57828 kB
PageTables: 65156 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 24303084 kB
Committed_AS: 4352716 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 160628 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359564283 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
DirectMap4k: 8078208 kB
DirectMap2M: 309248 kB

 

[hat]

Because B2 Phenoms are fail.

 

[suraswami]

1 month now, touch wood, the new cpu is working perfectly in my cheapo ECS board. My advise, if you are getting BSOD then its not worth the time to troubleshoot. RMA to AMD and get a new one.

 

[DaveR]

Just and Update to this, Stricly speaking my Mother Board only lists support for 4Gb Ram its a Jetway NC 81 ( JNC-81 ) It takes notebook memory in the shape of 2 x SODIM sticks. But it does appear to see 4GB sodimms OK.

It has a Phenom 9350e quad proc:

running XP 64 1x 4GB stick and a 1x 2GB (6GB total) stick runs fine
running XP 64 2x 4GB stick (8GB total) Intermittant fail with BSOD

Memtest+ with 2x 4GB runs absolutley fine

running Windows 7 Beta 64 2x 4GB stick (8GB total) runs fine

I tried tweaking the VDIMM and NB as suggested and it made no difference, What i have tried is a beta version of Windows 7 and that runs absolutley fine with the full 8GB.

I know the MB doesn't officially support 8GB but i woudln't be at all suprised if that was mainly due to 4gb SODIMS only recently becomming available.

The upshot is that if it runs ok with Windows 7 then its not likely a CPU issue.

Seems to be more an XP thing? If anyone has any thoughts as to why XP won't run in this combination i'd love to hear it.

Thanks

Dave

 

[suraswami]

Just and Update to this, Stricly speaking my Mother Board only lists support for 4Gb Ram its a Jetway NC 81 ( JNC-81 ) It takes notebook memory in the shape of 2 x SODIM sticks. But it does appear to see 4GB sodimms OK.

It has a Phenom 9350e quad proc:

running XP 64 1x 4GB stick and a 1x 2GB (6GB total) stick runs fine
running XP 64 2x 4GB stick (8GB total) Intermittant fail with BSOD

Memtest+ with 2x 4GB runs absolutley fine

running Windows 7 Beta 64 2x 4GB stick (8GB total) runs fine

I tried tweaking the VDIMM and NB as suggested and it made no difference, What i have tried is a beta version of Windows 7 and that runs absolutley fine with the full 8GB.

I know the MB doesn't officially support 8GB but i woudln't be at all suprised if that was mainly due to 4gb SODIMS only recently becomming available.

The upshot is that if it runs ok with Windows 7 then its not likely a CPU issue.

Seems to be more an XP thing? If anyone has any thoughts as to why XP won't run in this combination i'd love to hear it.

Thanks

Dave

May be its a mobo issue. In my case the cpu has seen 4 different mobos (all different brands from Asus, Abit to ECS).

May be its XP 64 too, but I got the error in W2K3 64/32 too, may be its based on the same XP kernel.

 

[DaveR]

Just to update this,

My MoBO has a SATA and IDE drives, the IDE port had a Slim CD as Master and an IDE hard drive as SLave. The OS was being loaded on and run from the IDE Hard Drive. When i installed the OS to the SATA Drive XP 64 ran without issues!.

I tried again with the OS installed on the IDE (but this time without using a paging file) but still got the BSOD

I don't know what caused the issue specifically but after this I changed my IDE Hard drive, IDE Cable (Not sure, but i was using an old cable) and made the IDE Hard Drive the Master and the Slim CD the Slave (which was easier said than done as the CD's Master/Slave selection is via Firmware)

This seems to have done the trick (so far!) , Strange it only manifested itself in XP 64 when i went from 6GB to 8GB and never occured at all in WIn7

 

[suraswami]

Just to update this,

My MoBO has a SATA and IDE drives, the IDE port had a Slim CD as Master and an IDE hard drive as SLave. The OS was being loaded on and run from the IDE Hard Drive. When i installed the OS to the SATA Drive XP 64 ran without issues!.

I tried again with the OS installed on the IDE (but this time without using a paging file) but still got the BSOD

I don't know what caused the issue specifically but after this I changed my IDE Hard drive, IDE Cable (Not sure, but i was using an old cable) and made the IDE Hard Drive the Master and the Slim CD the Slave (which was easier said than done as the CD's Master/Slave selection is via Firmware)

This seems to have done the trick (so far!) , Strange it only manifested itself in XP 64 when i went from 6GB to 8GB and never occured in WIn7

When using 2 x IDE drives in a single cable make sure you set the jumpers on the drives to 'Cable Select' instead of master slave. Lot less headache and infact the manufacturers recommend that.