Ram issues! i need someone's expertise

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squ1rr7y

New Member
i am upgrading my families pc for my little brother, im maxxing out the ram and bought a video card. i just bought mushkin ram pc3200 1gb sticks 4 of them, the computer started crashing shortly after turing it on. i returened the ram assuming 1 stick was defective. i exchanged for kingston ram 4 x 1Gb pc3200, no crashing so far, but.... im only getting 2.75 usable out of 4 Gb installed. can any body tell me why?:confused:?
video card is a GeForce 9800 GT 512mb ddr3

here are the specs of the pc.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name ALIEN
System Manufacturer System manufacturer
System Model System Product Name
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+, 2200 Mhz, 1 Core(s), 1 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0902, 15/03/2006
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale Canada
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
User Name ALIEN\ADMIN
Time Zone Mountain Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 2.75 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.85 GB
Total Virtual Memory 5.50 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.45 GB
Page File Space 2.75 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys



System

Manufacturer System manufacturer
Model System Product Name
Total amount of system memory 4.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 1

Storage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total size of hard disk(s) 298 GB
Disk partition (C:) 276 GB Free (298 GB Total)
Media drive (D:) CD/DVD

Graphics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Total available graphics memory 1663 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 512 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1151 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.17.11.9745
Primary monitor resolution 1024x768
DirectX version DirectX 10

Network
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller

Notes
 
when you say usable, do you mean you go to task manager and it was 2.75 usable? If so, the other 1.25 are being used for background applications.

Go to task manager (ctrl+alt+del > task manager, or right click the task bar and click task manager), click processes, check the box at the bottom saying show processes from all users, click the heading saying memory and see which programs are using alot of the memory. If it is just Windows programs, that is about right, it is just what you see on screen at the time and background applications, which for 4gb of memory, ~1gb used for it is about right.

When you put the video card in, did you get a new power supply too? If not what power supply does the computer have?

And in future, if you want to check memory, you can use memtest, which is a utility that checks your memory for any problems. You can download it from here:

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/download.html

If you can't boot into windows, you can create a bootable disc with it on, and download those files from here:

http://www.memtest.org/
 
good choice on the kingston ram! I love kingston and they're great. aastii is right about ram usage. running windows and all background applications will use about 1 gig of ram which is normal. because you have an x64 based pc, it won't use the ram as effectively as it would if it was an x86 based pc but that can't be helped. ur fine
 
jarlmaster47 said:
good choice on the kingston ram! I love kingston and they're great. aastii is right about ram usage. running windows and all background applications will use about 1 gig of ram which is normal. because you have an x64 based pc, it won't use the ram as effectively as it would if it was an x86 based pc but that can't be helped. ur fine
Click to expand...

explain please
 
"Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 2.75 GB"

Means only 2.75 is usable. Have you met the term "memory remapping"?
 
i never even looked in the task manager. i was just going into control panel....system....but im going to try that memtest, that would have been usefull with the mushkin ram.

im running a 420watt power supply. im pushing this thing to its limits, but seems to be working fine. where would i look to see what kind of power im actually consuming at idle?

thanks for the info ;)
 
squ1rr7y said:
i never even looked in the task manager. i was just going into control panel....system....but im going to try that memtest, that would have been usefull with the mushkin ram.

im running a 420watt power supply. im pushing this thing to its limits, but seems to be working fine. where would i look to see what kind of power im actually consuming at idle?

thanks for the info ;)
Click to expand...

what brand 420W?
 
its a turbo link LC-A420ATX

i looked in the task manager it says under physical memory
total: 2815
cached: 1051
available: 1932
free: 968

so this pc is only using 3 out of the 4 sticks?

im running the memtest right now.... i will post with the results
 
squ1rr7y said:
its a turbo link LC-A420ATX

i looked in the task manager it says under physical memory
total: 2815
cached: 1051
available: 1932
free: 968

so this pc is only using 3 out of the 4 sticks?

im running the memtest right now.... i will post with the results
Click to expand...

I would get a new power supply asap from a good manufacturer. Because it is only an 9800gt a 400+ W should be enough.

You may be thinking but I have a 420 watt one now, why will a 400W be ok even though this one is rated at a higher wattage? That is because the one you have now is a cheap, unstable pile of crap made by a bad manufacturer (deer). Cheap PSUs have their peak power at what they are rated at, so ~420W for yours, however you keep it around there for any length of time and it will end up blowing. Really what you have is a power supply that can sustain probably ~300W at best. You get a higher quality unit and their peak power is still what is labelled on it, however they can work very close to that value and still be stable and efficient, and don't degrade as much over time. When a power supply blows though, it is not just the case of getting a new unit, because generally, and especially with cheap ones, they will take out other components too, so you will be out half a system and a power supply, rather than just buying a power supply now and keeping your computer intact. And as a double blow, the vast vast majority of warranties don't cover damage due to a seperate component failure.

Corsair, BFG, Silverstone, Seasonic, Antec, CoolerMaster and PC Power & Cooling are brands you should be looking into.

As to whether it is running just 3 of the four sticks, I very much doubt it. Did you read the link put below about memory remapping? You can test to see if it is, as you say, only 3 of the 4 sticks being recognised by downloading CPUz and clicking the SPD tab and looking at each of the slots. If all DIMM slots are populated, you know that the computer is seeing all sticks of memory
 
i read the memory-remapping good to know. im still learning new shit every day.

your 100% right...i ran cpu-z and its showing me 4096mb...what a great little utility....

i think tomorrow i will replace this power supply. thanks for the tips... i never really thought of researching the power supply. i figured i was good just based on ratings....something else for me to read about....

right on man...u might have just saved my pc.
thanks.......

here's my quote for the day.....

It takes a good person do to good things, evil people will do evil things. But for a good person to do evil things, that takes religion
 
ok aastii here is the explanation. x64 means that there are 64 clusters of transistors on the cpu and x86 means that there are 86 clusters of transistors on the cpu. x86 cpus also have larger memory caches and therefore make better use of available ram. it uses less ram while still allocating the necessary amount. basically 4 gigs on an x86 will beat 4 gigs on an x64 any day
 
jarlmaster47, but with a 32bit edition he will lose more than an entire gigabyte of installed RAM, because only 4GB of total address space is supported by Windows.

A 64bit edition can use all of it (if the hardware supports its), so who wins here?
 
jarlmaster47 said:
ok aastii here is the explanation. x64 means that there are 64 clusters of transistors on the cpu and x86 means that there are 86 clusters of transistors on the cpu. x86 cpus also have larger memory caches and therefore make better use of available ram. it uses less ram while still allocating the necessary amount. basically 4 gigs on an x86 will beat 4 gigs on an x64 any day
Click to expand...

tyttebøvs said:
jarlmaster47, but with a 32bit edition he will lose more than an entire gigabyte of installed RAM, because only 4GB of total address space is supported by Windows.

A 64bit edition can use all of it (if the hardware supports its), so who wins here?
Click to expand...

+1 to tytte. In theory, I understand that x86 should use memory more efficiently, however when only ~3.12GB max is usable by a 32 bit OS, a 64 bit OS will use it much more effectively with any ammount greater than 3gb
 
Aastii said:
+1 to tytte. In theory, I understand that x86 should use memory more efficiently, however when only ~3.12GB max is usable by a 32 bit OS, a 64 bit OS will use it much more effectively with any ammount greater than 3gb
Click to expand...

well yeah. just saying that x86>x64. 64 bit is the major factor
 
With the x64 architecture there comes many more things that makes it much better. So just because it uses slightly more memory doesn't really matter that much (we have plenty of it nowadays).
 
Last edited:
well just bought a corsair cmpsu-400cx. made the inside of the case much nicer it's all in loom. anybody have any input on this model?
 
squ1rr7y said:
well just bought a corsair cmpsu-400cx. made the inside of the case much nicer it's all in loom. anybody have any input on this model?
Click to expand...

It is a very good unit, all Corsair units are. It will power what you have with no problems what so ever.

In the future though if you upgrade to say a 5000 series or a fermi card, or whatever the latest and greatest is when the time comes for you to upgrade, you will need a unit with higher wattage to power your system, but for now, and if you upgraded to a 200 series or 4000 (with the exception of multi chip cards, eg. 4870x2, gtx295), 400W is plenty
 
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