Ram troubles on Asus MB

R

RofS

New Member
Hi all,

Been trying to find a solution to the problem myself and so far have only really got as far as making a particular brick wall rather bloody with tiny bits of my skull scattered here and there...

Basically, I put together my PC about 2/3 months ago and it was all working fine and dandy so far as the ram was concerned. It only had 2gb at the time but I intended to increase it when I could get a bit more money... Well, I got that little more money and so I bought a kingston set of 2*2gb PC2-8500 (same rating thingy as the other (nVidia) ram already installed). Both sets of ram are the same rating and 1066mhz but for some reason I can't work out (hence the thread), it messes up. The BIOS page shows 6GB is installed and CPU-Z agrees, whilst the system page (I'm running XP) says that only 3.0GB is installed. Also, the BIOS will alternate between 800mhz and 1066mhz (can't work out what I should keep at auto or if i should just manually set it to 5-5-5-15), yet the CPU-Z page is coming up with a DRAM frequency of less than 400!
Here and there the PC will insist there isn't enough memory to do something or the other (even sound recorder), even though 99% of the PC is idle.

Here's what's in the PC and I just hope one of you guys that knows an awful lot more can help me out...

MB: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (BIOS rev. 2001)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ (3GHz)
HDD: Samsung HD103UJ (1TB)
DVD: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223F
Graphics: PowerColour ATI Radeon HD 4670
RAM set 1 (original): nVidia 2*1GB DDR2 PC2-8500 1066MHz (OC22N1066SR2GK)
RAM set 2 (new): Kingston 2*2GB DDR2 PC2-8500 1066MHz (KHX8500D2K2/4G)
OS: Windows XP SP3


Thanks to anyone that can help me out at all!

EDIT: in the SPD section of CPU-Z each and every slot is saying the sticks are PC2-6400 (400MHz), even though the sticks and/or packagin clearly states PC2-8500...
 
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So far as I can tell, there is no explicit MHz option - I have tried, though, with the settings on auto, and with the speeds manually set to 5-5-5-15 with the voltage set to 2.1 and 2.2.

Neither seems to make any changes.

Incidentally, there is an SLI memory option which I have disabled - I presume (perhaps erroneously) that that only impacts if you have SLI compatible GPUs installed...
 
First up I'll point out unless you're running windows XP 64 (which, god save the queen if you are), then its physically impossible to use more then 4 gigs. XP dedicates some ram to its own process and thus, why you are only seeing 3 gigs.

As for your ram clocks speeds, The 400mhz you're seeing in CPU-Z is your actual clock, your theoretically getting 800mhz though (read). Check your FSB:RAM ratio to try and raise your ram to the 533mhz (1066mhz) you're looking for. In all honesty though, you wont notice much of a difference.

Hope this helps :).
 
kobaj said:
First up I'll point out unless you're running windows XP 64 (which, god save the queen if you are), then its physically impossible to use more then 4 gigs. XP dedicates some ram to its own process and thus, why you are only seeing 3 gigs.
Click to expand...


I'm on 32... Guess I'll ignore the other 2 gig then :p Thanks for clearing that one up.


kobaj said:
As for your ram clocks speeds, The 400mhz you're seeing in CPU-Z is your actual clock, your theoretically getting 800mhz though (read). Check your FSB:RAM ratio to try and raise your ram to the 533mhz (1066mhz) you're looking for. In all honesty though, you wont notice much of a difference.

Hope this helps :).
Click to expand...

Well, it would be fine and dandy if the ram was PC2-6400... But it's not - it's PC2-8500, so I don't understand why it won't register as that and achieve 533MHz on its own without overclocking... Perhaps you could explain the bit I'm missing? :p Or else tell me how I can fix it?
 
RofS said:
I'm on 32... Guess I'll ignore the other 2 gig then :p Thanks for clearing that one up.




Well, it would be fine and dandy if the ram was PC2-6400... But it's not - it's PC2-8500, so I don't understand why it won't register as that and achieve 533MHz on its own without overclocking... Perhaps you could explain the bit I'm missing? :p Or else tell me how I can fix it?
Click to expand...

Well, it could be that your motherbaord only supports "1066mhz memory by overclocking", so just look for something like memory divider and set it so your effective memory speed is 1066mhz(actual speed 533mhz).
 
That motherboard only supports memory up to 800mhz. Your 1066 ram is causing the issue, take them out and get more 800mhz if you really need more than 2gb of memory. Unless you are running memory intensive applications you don't.
 
johnb35 said:
That motherboard only supports memory up to 800mhz. Your 1066 ram is causing the issue, take them out and get more 800mhz if you really need more than 2gb of memory. Unless you are running memory intensive applications you don't.
Click to expand...

Taking out 1066 and buying 800 would be a complete waste of money. 1066 will just lower timings to 800 if the motherboard doesnt support it, just like it did. As for why the application is saying there is low memory could actually be related to his page file.

Still in all honesty, you're not going to notice a 133mhz speed boost. To get the most out of your ram (save for buying a new mobo/somehow overclocking) and being able to see all 6 gigs, Install Vista or Windows 7 64 bit.

:cool:
 
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