Does FSX stress or bring out faults in RAM modules?

[Guest vois2]

Seeing faults with RAM in FSX not seen in other games. I am wondering if others are finding or suspecting that perhaps FSX is so RAM-intensive that it might bring out faults in existing RAM modules which went unnoticed prior.My problem was/is occuring at load-up of FSX game start.It would start to load and then freeze on the initial splash screen panel. I could confirm this with Task Manager after it would go to "Not Responding" status in Task Manager.During the past week I have very patiently isolated the problem to either FSX itself (code) or to my RAM modules. (And I do mean isolated: tried two motherboards, different graphics cards, different PSUs, all combinations of the above). Many reformat/reinstalls with different HDs.At this point I have it to where the game will load most of the time (and playable). But that load-up is never consistent even now: several seconds to several minutes of load time are needed, and it always goes into Not Responding mode even if eventually the game does in fact load up. I can play it now but the inconsistency seen in loading/at loadup still bother me. I feel confident that I have isolated it to my RAM modules and am wondering if others are finding or noticing that FSX is particularly stressful on RAM (in the way of bringing out faults in that RAM). Thank youMy rig: P4 3.0 630HT --- 925X board (new) --- 7900GT (isolated as good) --- 3.0GB DDR2-333 --- operates fine under all other conditions

[delta november 0]

Does FSX stress or bring out faults in RAM modules?....Two words.... YOU BETCHA: :-lol Not just FSX but FS9 as well. In fs9 I had recurring CTDs and otheranomalys for months. Ran prime95, memtest86, and they showed no problem. Turned out to be a stick of 512MB that would not run at rated speed.

[Guest vois2]

>> Not just FSX but FS9 as well. In fs9 I had recurring CTDs>and other>anomalys for months. Ran prime95, memtest86, and they showed>no problem.> Turned out to be a stick of 512MB that would not run at>rated speed.How did you eventually confirm or diagnose the problem with the 512MB module? Thanks.

[delta november 0]

I would assume that your 3GB is three sticks of 1GB each.If thats true pull two of them out and fire up FS. If it hangs.....wait a while as it takes a while to load with 1 Gig, pull that stickand replace with another. If it doesn't hang then that one is a keeper.Do the same with the last one, if all three of them fail try loweringyour memory bus speed a little in BIOS.

[DescendDescend 25]

If you are runing dual channel memory with slots 1 and 3 filled with 1 Gb each and then you add one more Gb I would have thought your system is confused. Effectively you now have 2Gb one one channel an 1Gb on the other.

[Guest vois2]

From the original poster:I have 3.0 GB in dual channel configuration. That is 2x1 GB and 2x512MB, occupying the 4 slots appropriately.However I will now test the dual channel pairs as Denny described to see if I can isolate the issue to simply a pair.For now everything is running great but I still get the odd load-up of FSX issue.

[Guest allcott]

It is often the case that 1gig and 512meg RAM don't sit comfortably with each other. If yuou check with your mobo manufacturers website you might be lucky and find a chart of acceptable combinations that have been tested and should work. I say `should` as, unless the brands and timings are identical you can still have problems. I would start by just taking out the 512 meg sticks and running the 2-gig. That will be sufficient to prove both whether the problem is the mix-and-match and whether one of the 1 gig sticks is faulty. If it is then just take one out at a time - you have a 50:50 chance of finding the cuplrit first time out!Its also worth looking at the small print of your mobo manual. Quite a few boards will not support the fourth slot being filled with certain types or speed of RAM.Allcott

[Mace 1,941]

Yes FSX can bring out faults in RAM modules. So can any intesive app.If I overvolt my ram too much when overclocking, my sys runs fine normally...but run FSX, and it kills it with a BSOD.FS is a good stress tester. Prime95 and SuperPI work well too, but FS seems to be about as good. :)RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[delta november 0]

Rhett; I can say from experience that FS is actually better.:-lolOh! Something I forgot to mention in my replies. Go to your memory manufacturer's web site and usethier configurator, or whatever they call the method, for getting the recommended memory for your specificMobo. I was checking out Corsair's site a couple of weeks ago and found out that they will not recommend pc-3200RAM for my Mobo even though Asus says thats what it takes, they recommend pc-2700. I suspect they got tiredof warranties from this board. They also would only recommend pc2700 up to 1 gig, higher amounts than thatthey lowered the spec again. In my case I had tried to get 3 sticks of 512 to work but would get random CTD's. Ran prime 95, Memtest86,andseveral other tests that did not indicate a problem...but FS would find it.:-eek In my case I dropped my memory bus speed to 90% of the advertised 200Mhz and that cured it. It didn't seem tomake any difference in the way FS ran...it just stopped the CTD's. So....If you have the ability to manually lower your bus speed, try that before you send anything back. My personal experience has been that the amount of memory is more important than the speed to FS.

[Guest vois2]

Thanks to you both for the replies. So far I am up to 48 hrs running FSX without problems (...knock on silicon). You would laugh (or cry) to learn that it basically took me from the 17th to the 26th of October for being able to reach a point where the game would play as it is now -- without any hiccups. I'm quite certain the odd behavior seen at load-up of FSX is indeed the RAM modules, having excluded everything else except for the FSX code/memory leaks, etc. When I feel like pushing my luck, I'll test those dual channel pairs as described above and see how performance is affected. Thanks again.