[nForce] graphics, memory, motherboard?

Question

Ram Mobo Graphics Problem
Spec:   AMD Semperon 2600+
   MSI K7N2 Delta2 (MS-6570E version 10C)
      bios phoenix 6.00PG
      bios W6570NMS V11.4 081604 13:34:12
   MSI Geforce FX5700LE - TD256 (602-8959-030)
      bios   4.36.20.29.00
      driver 6176
   1024Mb (2*512Mb) Pc3200 identical batch generic ram
   500W Psu  +12V 22A, +5V 30A, +3.3V 28A
   MSI DVD Rom
   MSI CD-RW CR52
   onboard sound, pci modem
   Windows 98se, Directx 9.0c
   Updated audio drivers ALC 655 (A3.69) 5.10.5780
Senario: With just one 512mb stick in the machine: windows 98se, 3D Mark 2001, 3D Mark 2003, all apps and all 3D games work. I can also O.C. the CPU to 2200Mhz and the graphics core from 250Mhz to 300Mhz and graphics memory from 400Mhz to 490Mhz scoring 10338 in 3Dmark 2001  and 2332 in 3Dmark 2003.
   With the two 512Mb sticks, either in dual channel mode or not, windows and 2d apps work, even 3Dmark 2001 works but all games don't start or go freaky and 3Dmark 2003 stops at the end of the second test saying "DrawIndexPrimative failed - Out of Video memory"
   With one 512Mb stick I get about 10-17fps in the second test in 3Dmark 2003
   With two 512Mb sticks I get about 1-5fps in the second test in 3Dmark 2003 and then stops saying the above quoted!
With the two sticks of RAM in the machine, In the bios I preceded to increase the agp apeture size from 256Mb to 512Mb, this did help it get through the second test with 10-17fps but still failed the test with "DrawIndexPrimative failed - Out of Video memory"
   bios settings:  video ram cachable   - disabled
         system bios cachable - enabled
         video bios cachable  - enabled
         fast write        - enabled
         AGP 8x           - enabled
I've tried swapping the cachable setting in every combination without success
I've tried different aperture sizes without success
This happens whether overclocked or underclocked
Has anyone come across this before, does anyone know what is going on?
mik

Answer 1

let me tell you a little story from my own experience. i used to work for a PC systems builder a couple of years ago, and we used mostly MSI boards. we also used cheap memory supplied by DaneElec.
now, one particular board started giving us grief when we introduced it. it was the K7N2 Delta, and we had at one point about 12 machines in production all with similar faults, and we didn't seem able to fix it. random blue screens, 3DMark2001 dropping out to desktop with no errors, occasionally no boot at all.
one day i got one of these machines, ripped out the DaneElec memory (various memory chips used on these including Nanya and Infineon) and put in some Corsair memory that our research guys had. guess what? the machine had no problems. tried the same two sticks in the other machines, and they were all fine too.
so i got our buyer to get some Samsung memory (they were more expensive than DaneElec, but cheaper than the Corsair), replaced all the DaneElec memory in the problem machines, and kept the Samsung for all future K7N2 based systems. then a few weeks later, our buyer was reportedly told that DaneElec had "fixed" the problem with their memory, so our buyer bought a load again. grr, still same problems in K7N2 boards, and now playing havoc in the P4 865PE Neo boards
(lol, as an irony, this same cheap DaneElec memory worked much better in our new K8T-based systems, better than the Samsung! - and even more ironic was this PC system builder eventually going bust....)