›
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

DDR400 RAM (PC3200)

FarragarFarragar
edited April 2006 in Technology
Hey all, i had 1 GB of DDR 400 RAM in one stick, on a gigabyte motherboard (spec to follow). Now i'm no hardware man; but i know whats good, and i've made a couple computers in my time.
Now, my mum said she would buy me another GB of RAM for my 15th birthday (in July) but i saw 2GB of RAM on ebay for the price of one. I quickly ordered the RAM and that has now become my rather early birthday present.
After i fitted the RAM i had 3GB in 3 of my four DIMM slots. Shortly after boot it bluescreened on me and performed a memory dump... Fine i rebooted and everything seemed ok and anything (Firefox, Itunes etc) worked untill i ran counter strike:source. This seems to be some sort of trigger that forces it to bluescreen. The second time this happened it would not boot (like when you have multiple partitons and none of the boot flags are set to 1) I took out one stick of RAM and it works fine, i've also tried each stick individualy and they all work individually OR in pairs.
Does anyone know of compatability issues with 3GB of RAM on Gigabyte motherboards? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks all

Laurie

Comments

  • deaf-mutedeaf-mute
    The 3GB problem may only be with ceertain (older) boards. Google of "gigabyte motherboard 3GB RAM" shows product descriptions that specifically say it supports 3GB RAM.
  • AprecheApreche
    Gigabyte is the company that made the motherboard. The company doesn't matter. I need to know specifically which motherboard it is. That way I can check if your motherboard has dual-channel. I will also be able to check how much RAM your motherboard can hold. Every motherboard has a limit to how much RAM it can handle. Modern boards can have 1G or 2G sticks in each slot, but that isn't always the case. Maybe the limit for your mobo is 2G? If your BIOS is correctly measuring the amount of RAM you have at POST, then this is probably not your problem.

    While maxing out the RAM is a possibility, my best guess right now is that the RAM is broken. It might have been bad when you got it. You might have shocked it when you installed it. There are plenty of ways RAM can break.

    So here's what you do. Try using the computer with just one stick, then just one of the other sticks, then only the third stick. Next, try every combination of two sticks. Try different sticks in different slots. See which combinations make the computer work and which ones cause the computer to crash. Via trial and error you will easily be able to tell which memory sticks and/or which memory slots are broken.
  • deaf-mutedeaf-mute
    edited April 2006
    I was going to suggest putting each of the sticks in individually, then saw that that has already been tried ^_^
    Post edited by deaf-mute on
  • AprecheApreche
    Oops, didn't see that. What do you want from me so early in the morning? The fact that it crashed when you ran CS:Source shows there might be some sort of AGP issue. I really need to know exactly which motherboard it is to help any more.
  • ScooterScooter
    If the memory swapping does not work I'd look into evil spirits. Wave a dead chicken over the pc changing "SPIRITS BEGONE!"
  • FarragarFarragar
    Whoa, thanks for the quick replies, i think this is the motherboard, but i can't really tell for sure without rooting through my driver cd collection.

    http://www.misco.co.uk/productinformation/~100652~/Gigabyte%20K8N%20Sli%20S939%204DDR%202PEG%202PE%202P%20SND%20GLAN%20SA.htm#

    I was listening to one of the old podcasts and i heard that you may need to flip a registary key for windows to accept over 2GB of RAM, anyone know where that key is? .. Registry trawling is hell on Earth...
  • AprecheApreche
    I don't think I ever said you need to flip a Windows registry key for it to accept more than 2G of RAM. I'm pretty sure that's just untrue. In Linux however, you need to enable high memory mode in the kernel if you have more than 1G of RAM. You need to enable even higher memory mode if you have more than 4G of RAM.

    http://kerneltrap.org/node/2450

    Anyway, I think I've found your problem. The reason I wanted to see your motherboard is to see if it had dual-channel. It does. That means you need an even number of memory sticks. You could theoretically use an odd number of sticks, but then dual-channel won't be enabled. Dual-channel does more for your computer's performance than that extra 1G of RAM. Use two sticks and make sure your computer says "dual-channel enabled" when it boots. Read all about dual-channel here:

    http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Memory/Dual-Channel/
  • FarragarFarragar
    edited April 2006
    Ok, thanks - I think i heard about the registy key on building a new PC 2. But i was rather sleepy, perhaps i imagined it :)
    Anyway, thanks for that, unfortunatley i'm still tethered to crappy windws untill i can get steam on Linux. :(
    Anywho, i did think it might be something aong the odd number line, i know this was a problem with RAM a while ago, but i was a bit dubious when 1 GB worked fine, i'll use my two identical sticks of RAM then and eBay the samsung stick, i'll keep you posted on how it goes. Btw, it does display
    '3072 Mb RAM OK' on boot, and it lets me know its not on dual channel with the samsung and the other stick, i'll try the identical sticks when i get home and keep you guys posted, thanks! :)
    Post edited by Farragar on
  • FarragarFarragar
    Ok, thanks scott - i see why it's not running in Dual Channel atm - i've got the two modules in DIMM 1 and in DIMM 2, i'll put them in DIMM 1 + DIMM 3 when i get back and let you know of the results.
  • AprecheApreche
    Yeah, every motherboard is different.
  • FarragarFarragar
    Ok, all sorted now - i got them running dual channel, and i'm going to ebay off the old samsung RAM, if anyone wants it before it goes on ebay PM me.
    Thanks all
Sign In or Register to comment.