Video artifacts

[peterwit]

I recently purchased a stick of 4GB DDR3 1066 ram for my laptop.
I have a Lenovo W500 purchased in the fall of '09, and the G.Skill product number is F3-8500CL7S-4GBSQ.
This laptop has a switchable graphics between the integrated Intel controller and a dedicated ATI chip. I like to use the integrated controller because I've found it to be more stable.
However when I put in my new G.Skill RAM, I started getting graphics artifacts. Text in web browsers becomes unreadable and photoshop and illustrator are impossible to use. This problem went away when switching back to my original RAM or using the dedicated graphics processor.
I have run memtest86+ and it did not discover any errors, so I am unsure how to know if it is a defective module or if it is simply not compatible with my system.

[Tradesman]

My guess would be probable it's not compatible as far as timings, not the base timings so much as the advanced timings. The stick has only been out a couple of years so it may be a little higher on the curve than your laptop...a coupple things you could try would be to see if the laptop has a newer BIOS available and update that if there is, else could try resetting the BIOS to system defaults and see if it will read/interact with the stick better.

[peterwit]

Okay. I just updated to the latest BIOS revision and it did not seem to help.
Here is a picture of what I'm talking about:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13783906/scrambled.jpg

Is my best bet to return the RAM and use a different model? And if so, what model would you suggest?
Also can you explain what you mean by "Advanced Timings"?

[Tradesman]

Think I'd try a different model, but not sure what to suggest, I try to stay away from laptops, for reasons such as this, you seldom ever can make changes to DRAM - not timings, voltages or basically anything else, the BIOSs are pretty much locked up. By advanced timings, there are your base timings which is all most people see and/or mess with, generally they are printed on the package, like 7-7-7-21, but beyond that their are secondart and at times even tertiary timings that are available to fine tune/tweak, if you look in the BIOS of a desktop (non-off the shelf system) you'll find an area for advenaced/secondary timings like tRFC, tRC, tWTR, etc....there's a large number of additional timings, but generally once the base timings are in the BIOS should automatically adjust those timings to fit the base timings

[peterwit]

Right, there aren't any options to change things in the BIOS. All the pc-8500 1066 RAM on newegg.com claim the same timings, does that mean they all might have this same problem? I don't really want to play trial-and-error with shipping charges and restocking fees...

[Tradesman]

I'll drop GSkill Tech a note to take a look, they may have information on your laptop, it will prob be tomorrow or so

[peterwit]

Thanks!
An additional note: I had been using the 4gb + one of the original 2gb sticks (Nanya brand).
I'm now trying just the G.Skill module and i haven't had any artifacts yet. That doesn't really solve my problem though, since the whole reason I purchased new RAM was to have >4Gb.

[Tradesman]

That may be the problem right there, even with mobos that let you adjust EVERYTHING, with DDR3, any time you mix sets it can be problematic, even it you take two identical kits in your case say you bout two separate sticks of 4GB, could well have problems even then, that would be where you'd want to buy a two stick SET. It's generally even worse when you mix different type/densities of sticks. If the one is fine, I'd prob RMA and get a two stick set, 8 may be more than what you want, but it would basically be that or 4GB...one thing about 8, if you don't really have a need for that much, you could take 2-3 of it and make a RAM disk, which improve overall speed some, depending on what you put in it.

[peterwit]

yeah I didn't really want to spend twice the money since my laptop is already feeling old and i honestly don't know what I would do with 8gigs of ram. However you have an interesting point about a RAM disk, I had never considered that. I suppose I will try to decide if its worth $40 to me...

Is this matched module thing a new phenomenon/speed related? I have never run into it before.

[Tradesman]

Primarily it's come along w/ DDR3 and is especially prevalent in higher density (4-8GB sticks) and high freq sets (roughly 1600 and up) but happens at all levels, the good old days of DDR and DDR2 when you could mix sticks of different size, timings, freqs, even number of chips has passed us by. Particularly in desktop DRAM where various lines of DRAM are being tweaked to chipset and even CPU architecture