G400 and Win98se icon corruption

[Heyu]

Hi all,
I am using a G400 16MB DH with an ABIT BE6-II mobo. I seems that the most of the icons (including those on the menU) show strange pinkish or corrupted colours. What is going on? Is it an IRQ prob (now at IRQ5) or other things? Anyone had the same prob? How did you solve it? Please help, thanks!

Specs: ABIT BE6-2 128MB PC133 RAM, G400 16MB DH AGP, P3500E w/MSI slotket2 (not o'c yet), IBM 13.5G 22GXP

[Larry]

I have a BF6, and have experienced the same wierd pinkish icons in media player, explorer, and various system tray icons. The solution is very simple, but far from obvious. I found the solution in another thread posted a while back.

Go into your BIOS and changed the "SDRAM Leadoff" option from 3 to 4. Reboot.

Problems solved!!!!

Larry

[gbm]

Although I am not sure if this helps, try to change the interrupt to something above 8. To do this, assign IRQ5 to ISA in BIOS setup.

[[SITH}PELADO]

i have that problem when i enable agp 2x...try using 1x

[Heyu]

Thanks Larry, changing the SDRAM Leadoff did help! Thanks for the other posts as well! However, do you know why there is a need to change it? The manual says it reflects the "SPD Value " of the RAM. What is that? THANKS AGAIN!

[Larry]

Sorry, heyu...I have no idea what that value explicitly does. As long as it fixes the problem with no sideffects, I'm happy!

Larry

[Goc]

Looks like we need Jorden "The Mad Bios Doctor" here... Anyway it's certain it is an option dealing with memory timings and you tried to use your memory too agressively.

Do you have brand name RAM (Siemens, Micron) or a no-name taiwanese stick? Also, is it PC100 or PC133 (maybe PC66 )

[Larry]

I'm not sure if he was trying to use the memory to aggrsively because that is the default setting for that particualr motherboard.

Larry

[The PIT]

I had this until I re-installed DX7a. I was running in agp x1 at the time.

[Niklas]

Hello i had the same exactly the same problem as Heyu had !

So thanx to you Larry . My problem was solved now !

[Gurm]

Many memory chips, which aren't as nice as they claim to be (nobody flame me over the hyper-expensive memory you bought, hehe), will aggressively clock their SPD. They are assuming that you will either have a BIOS that auto-detects all memory timings (a rare thing) or that you will have the common sense (although it is DEFINITELY not something anyone ever thinks of so don't be offended by my referring to it as "common sense") to turn all the "extra" timing bits all the way down before proceeding.

Therefore, you end up with memory that reports itself (and is labeled) as CAS2, when in reality the leadoff timing is more in line with a CAS3 or higher chip.

*sigh* I hate memory.

So basically, for those of you wondering...

YES, turning the leadoff timing up DOES marginally affect your system speed. How marginally? I dunno. Someone with RAM that works both ways wanna try it? I'm willing to bet it's not even 1%, but...

And the technical explanation is that your RAM works as a digital signal, sending data on the rising and falling cycles of the digital strobe (for lack of a better term for it)... and sometimes on the in-betweens as well.

All the various timings in there relate to how many cycles it takes to do a read, a write, a refresh, etc.

Increasing the leadoff means that there is a slightly bigger delay before doing a refresh, so the signal is at full strength and totally synched before the update occurs...

Or something like that. I'm oversimplifying and if some memory GURU wants to correct me, feel free.

- Gurm

[This message has been edited by Gurm (edited 23 January 2000).]