Please help me end this BSOD nightmare

OK, let me begin by saying that I am *not* overclocking this CPU. I was told
that this was clearly an error on core #3 of my processor. I was running
OCCT v3.1.0 and had allowed this CPU to begin testing. It lasted all of 5m
53s. I cannot figure out what is wrong here. Is my processor defective or is
it my motherboard? What should I be doing to find the culprit here? I have
been getting blue screens of death ever since I installed this processor,
but not before. I have to assume that they are in some way connected, but
somehow I want to know for sure what is going on here. Most of the blue
screens of death occurred during gaming. The bottom line is that I need
proof if I am going to confront AMD about this and the processor is in
warranty. Someone please help me.

- Ben

On 7/12/2010 3:02 AM, Ben Williams wrote:
OK, let me begin by saying that I am *not* overclocking this CPU. I was
told
that this was clearly an error on core #3 of my processor. I was running
OCCT v3.1.0 and had allowed this CPU to begin testing. It lasted all of 5m
53s. I cannot figure out what is wrong here. Is my processor defective
or is
it my motherboard? What should I be doing to find the culprit here? I have
been getting blue screens of death ever since I installed this processor,
but not before. I have to assume that they are in some way connected, but
somehow I want to know for sure what is going on here. Most of the blue
screens of death occurred during gaming. The bottom line is that I need
proof if I am going to confront AMD about this and the processor is in
warranty. Someone please help me.

- Ben


I don't know--I have a 965 that seems to have a core 3 that is less
overclock capable than the other cores. It seems to like 1.465v, when
the other cores are happy at a little below 1.40v (3.51G) The other
cores will go to 3.6G using 1.465v. I don't like to run with stock
cooling at 1.465v

On 7/12/2010 3:02 AM, Ben Williams wrote:
Most of the blue
screens of death occurred during gaming
What happens when you use AMD's overclock utility to do a stability
test? Your graphs show a very regular drop in CPU usage that I don't
understand.

It's also possible that the video card is causing the problem.
Or, something on the motherboard is failing under load or temperature.
I have seen similar problems with mainly ATI video cards and games
"optimized" for Nvidia cards. This type of problem may also have a
relationship to driver versions, etc.

Also, I found that some memory & motherboard combinations do not work
well with the default memory timing and voltage.
Usually, when this happens, the memory is running at it's maximum rated
speed. relaxing the timing from say 5 5 5 15 to 6 6 6 18 or so might
help. Some motherboards will, in auto timing mode, relax the timing even
further. (Knowing what was set by the auto timing option sometimes helps
in understanding what is going on.)

There are various utilities (some built into BIOS) that can turn off the
offending core. This is the surest way to isolate to a specific core
when nothing else is definitive.