RAM Question...

'works his todd off'?

 

Very informative thread. Good info in here.

Good luck Honeygirl!! You'll die a thousand deaths when that thing starts humming and colors start flying by you, your hair blowing back at the speed.

 

yeah, i bought a couple sticks of pc2700 512mb and plugged them into an athlon 3200. the thing took a serious dump. i think somebody altered one of the chips cuz the bios calls it a pc2100 when i put it in by itself! wtf?

running one stick boots okay, but the machine is really not very happy. is that single stick bad or is it a problem of not having the two sticks in?

 

Harry - thank you so much for the links. I downloaded the first one, and couldn't open it due to an error message "There was an error opening this document. File does not begin with "%PDF.' ...I have no clue - but I looked at the other link and nearly peed myself. You're talking to someone who closes her eyes when she puts in a CD - the only RAM I know about is in the paddock outside . I'm so stoked that you went to all that trouble though - and I'm really grateful for all of your advice and comments to try and point me in the right direction! I rang up my geek mate, and he's gone back to China for his hols. The good news is however, I spoke to an inmate today who is a bit computer savvy (hence the three year stretch), and we ended up talking about Xtra Broadband...he didn't think I needed to do anything to my RAM - and Telecom today confirmed that I should be fine without the upgrade. I just can't understand why they would put that on their PC Specifications list and then say "don't worry about it" - bastards! I think long term - I'll take Bootay's advice and save up and get something super snazzy. In the meantime though - I'm gonna give this broadband thingy a go, and hope like hell that I can get by without upgrading my RAM. You've all been really fabulous and so helpful - thanks so much, and I've certainly learned more than I ever expected about the inner workings of this old thing! .

 

I don't think I've ever noticed where an Award BIOS identifies your ram type. Is it on the POST screen when you first turn the machine on?

In any case, it doesn't identify the chips/ram, it actually just identifies the bus speed you have enabled. If it thinks you have PC2100, then the BIOS is still set to the default, as shipped, bus speed of 133mhz(x2 aka 266). You need to enter your chipset options and up your memory speed to 166(x2 aka 333). If that's the case, I'm amazed that your cpu is recognized properly as a 3200+ because that is also determined by bus speed. My cpu speed (2600+, actually 2.13 Ghz) is based on a clock multiplier of 8 times my 266mhz bus. If I reset my BIOS to its default (it's really old), it would be 8 times 200 and think that I have a 1.6 GHz, which, I think, is an Athlon 1900+. Also, FYI, my memory is running at the asynchronous speed of 333mhz (PC2700), versus the 266mhz FSB for my cpu, which is supported by all modern motherboards. To add more confusion, I actually have two 512 sticks of PC3200, which could be run at 400mhz bus, but my ancient mobo doesn't have that option. That's ok, cause my next one will.

It does sound like you either have a defective stick of ram or a bad DIMM slot. Easy to test which... if you can run either stick in the working DIMM slot, the other slot is your problem. If only one of the two sticks works in that slot, you have bad RAM. Also, make sure you are using the correct two DIMM slots to enable dual channel. Most nForce2 boards have 3 slots, but you have to use the correct 2 in tandem with identical speed/size ram to get it to work. You cant have a 256 MB stick of PC2700 in one, and a 128MB stick of PC2100 in the other. In fact, if you tried that, it just might "dump" on you.

Last, having dual channel enabled usually generates performance gains of about 10-15%. Theoretically, it could be more, but the cpu pipe cant handle the load (too much traffic on the highway). The real performance appreciation comes from the bandwidth gain between the onboard graphics chip and the system memory it is addressing.

Hope that helps.

 

NP. I just hope I didn't geek/bore you to death. I've noticed than when I start talking about this or A-V equipment (HDTV anyone?), my wife rolls her eyes and leaves the room.

 

One of my husband's screen names is x-avguy if that tells you anything. My eyes are permenantly stuck.
We spent more on wiring in our new house than I spent for my first car. If I hear Hi Def, Tivo, HTPC or the word speaker one more time, I'll die.
Do you do divorces?

 

Not yet, but I'm sure she's considered it a few times!

 

BTW, can he send me some pointers? Maybe a schematic and a price list?

(I can't stop. I'm hopeless)

 

We had it all done as we were building. I'm sure nothing would please him more than to talk about it. Come see us!
This is a forum he frequents, you might already have it but here you go in case you don't.
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/index.php?