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G74SX Issue with Corsair vengeance 1866MHz speed ram

Lismail0
Level 7
For Christmas I got the 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866MHz upgrade kit. So I took out my battery and held down the power button for 30 seconds to drain the electricity from the board. I then removed my original 14 gigs of ram and installed the two new corsair sticks into the the first and second slot on the board.

It booted up and ran great for a couple of hours then it blue screened for the first time. I thought nothing of it hoping it was nothing serious. For the next couple of days it ran smoothly except for 1 or 2 more blue screens. But finally a few days ago my computer started to blue screen very frequently and it blue screened during a windows update and corrupted my boot.

At that point i was done. So i tried to re install windows and it kept blue screening so i decided to switch out the the new ram for the original ram and it didn't blue screen once. So that led me to believe the problem was the new ram. With that in mind i tested each stick of the new ram separately with memtest and no errors were found.

Also when I just had one stick of the new ram in at a time it didn't blue screen.

So I'm wondering if it is a compatibility issue because i know people have been running Kingston's hyper-x 1866 speed ram fine with out problems. Maybe i'm doing something wrong I don't know.

My laptop model and processor:
Asus G74SX-dh73-3d
Intel i7 2760qm 2.4ghz

Thanks, I look forward to your posts!
G74SX-DH73-3D
<---------------->
i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866MHz CL11 Dual Channel Memory
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive->Boot
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Disk Drive->Storage
WEI->7.6-7.9-7.3-7.3-7.9
24,770 Views
49 REPLIES 49

dstrakele
Level 14
What is the Bugcheck Code reported in the BugCheck source events in the System Event Log?

Are there any other Warnings or Errors in the System or Application Event Logs that may point to a troubleshooting direction?

What happens if you install the new memory in slots 1 and 3?
G74SX-A1 - stock hardware - BIOS 202 - 2nd Monitor VISIO VF551XVT

I'm not sure I can check the event log because i'm running on a clean installation since the crashes. But I will try and install the ram in slots 1 and 3 and see if that runs smoothly. Either way i'll get back to you. Thanks.
G74SX-DH73-3D
<---------------->
i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866MHz CL11 Dual Channel Memory
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive->Boot
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Disk Drive->Storage
WEI->7.6-7.9-7.3-7.3-7.9

dstrakele
Level 14
No worries about the event log... If you've done a clean install, you've eliminated a lot of potential problems. If it runs stable as it is, I wouldn't worry about swapping the memory slots (unless you determined it wasn't running in dual channel mode in slots 1 and 2).
G74SX-A1 - stock hardware - BIOS 202 - 2nd Monitor VISIO VF551XVT

BrodyBoy
Level 10
Lismail0 wrote:
So I'm wondering if it is a compatibility issue because i know people have been running Kingston's hyper-x 1866 speed ram fine with out problems.

Where have you seen this? It's been my impression that the G74 owners who have tried 1866 RAM have not gotten it to run successfully at speed. It's not a supported RAM spec, which of course doesn't always mean anything....but in this case, I think you may have just run into a basic incompatibility.

I think I recall a few people here who got these successfully running at 1866 but only had two SODIMMs installed (i.e. 8 GB). It was those who tried to run 4x4=16GB that found they would only run at 1333MHz. Referring to http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?2503-Kingston-HyperX-1866-PnP-SODIMM-Memory/page2
Perhaps you could PM wanfeilwong and/or dcmr1888 and ask them how they got their 8GB working at 1866?
--
G74SX-CST1-CBIL, i7 2630QM 2GHz
32GB DDR3 RAM @1333MHz
GTX560M 3GB DDR5 (192 bit)
17.3" LED 1920x1080
Sentelic TP, BIOS 203
Debian Linux Wheezy (Testing) Kernel 3.2, NVIDIA 295.40

Well I tried installing the ram in slots 1 and 3 and it seems to be running smoothly so far. I've booted into windows and have been messing around for about an hour or so with out a single blue screen. So i suppose that is better than blue screening during every boot lol. I will keep you guys updated and let you know if it remains stable. Thanks for the help.
G74SX-DH73-3D
<---------------->
i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866MHz CL11 Dual Channel Memory
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive->Boot
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Disk Drive->Storage
WEI->7.6-7.9-7.3-7.3-7.9

OK so I decided to do a few test and share the results. I used CPU-Z to gather the information.

-Original ram installed into slots 1 and 2-
*Dram Frequency: 665.3MHz
*FSB : DRAM :1:5
* Timing: 9-9-9-24
* Command rate:1T

-Corsair Vengeance installed into slots 1 and 2-
*blue screens during boot

-Corsair Vengeance installed into slots 1 and 3-
*Dram Frequency: 665.3MHz
*FSB : DRAM :1:5
* Timing: 6-6-6-20
* Command rate:2T

-Corsair Vengeance installed into slot 1-
*Dram Frequency: 931.2MHz-931.7MHz
*FSB : DRAM :1:7
* Timing: 6-6-6-20
* Command rate:2T

So the new ram is working in slots 1 and 3 with faster timings but with the same dram clock as the original ram. And the new ram works with the faster clock and timings when i install only one module. I confused why my computer blue screens when i install the new ram in slots 1 and 2. Also why when i install the new ram into slots 1 and 3 does my dram clock not go up.
G74SX-DH73-3D
<---------------->
i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866MHz CL11 Dual Channel Memory
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive->Boot
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Disk Drive->Storage
WEI->7.6-7.9-7.3-7.3-7.9

fostert
Level 12
This is **very** illuminating Lismail0. Notice how the latency timings are 6-6-6-20? I come from a desktop overclocking background, and those timings are quite simply impossible with four or even two sticks of RAM running at 1866 MHz (unless you're using LN2...)! We on the forums here have assumed all along that ASUS programmed the BIOS to reject Plug-n-Play JEDEC Serial Presence Detect (SPD) settings and default to 1333MHz speeds when 4 sticks are installed. Now I see what is really happening: its not that the G74's BIOS simply won't support 1866 speeds, its that the integrated memory controller on the CPU can't be overclocked this fast with these timings!! As I say I don't know any IMC that can unless its at -150C.

Something about the BIOS-IMC-DRAM interface is not reading the programmed SPD (probably Intel XMP) settings from the modules properly. The BIOS is receiving 6-6-6-20 and dutifully adjusting itself to use these timings; then it hands this to the IMC (which either chokes or hands it to the RAM with a non-OC voltage) and WHAM! Either it blue screens on boot, or a failed boot is rescued by the BIOS the next time by reverting to 1333 MHz!

One stick runs fine at this because the load on the IMC is not as massive as with two or 4 sticks; hence the default voltage of 1.5V is sufficient. This is why overclockers prefer only 1-2 sticks installed: the IMC reaches the highest speeds then. I'm willing to bet that if the latencies were read properly (11-10-11-27) that the G74 would happily run with 4 sticks of 1866 MHz modules at 1.5V.

Just thinking out loud here. Hopefully this insight will lead ASUS programmers to nail down the BIOS problem that does not allow 4 sticks to run at 1866 MHz: they have to read the right timings with the SPD on the RAM!
--
G74SX-CST1-CBIL, i7 2630QM 2GHz
32GB DDR3 RAM @1333MHz
GTX560M 3GB DDR5 (192 bit)
17.3" LED 1920x1080
Sentelic TP, BIOS 203
Debian Linux Wheezy (Testing) Kernel 3.2, NVIDIA 295.40

That is very interesting fostert thanks for the insight.

I've been doing some more testing and i was able to boot into a flash drive memtest with the corsair ram installed in slots one and two and the the dram speed was 931 with a timing of 10-10-10-27 with dual channel enabled. But of course it started to shoot error codes about 6 minutes into the test and never really stoped i turned the test off after about a thousand errors (lol).

What confuses me the most is how i ran the ram in dual channel mode for a few days with very little blue screens (seriously like 2-3) and now i cant even boot. Why is that?

I'm guessing that the only thing that will make this ram run properly is if Asus released a proper bios that would address this issue, bummer. I guess i'm going to try and get an 8GB kit of the Kingston 1866 ram because i've heard a few reports of rigs running stable with that ram installed into the first and second slot.

Thanks for all the help guys.
G74SX-DH73-3D
<---------------->
i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866MHz CL11 Dual Channel Memory
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce Solid State Drive->Boot
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Disk Drive->Storage
WEI->7.6-7.9-7.3-7.3-7.9