Member Avatar for Turendur

Hey all,

I was looking in my BIOS the last night because I just got more ram, 2 1gb OCZ Platinum pc 3200, i put it in my computer and it would only read my old ram, I switched the ram and place my new ram in where the old ones where, the old ones 2 512mb OCZ Gold pc 3200 were and it would read only the new ones. Is there a way to make it read both sets so I could have a total of 3 gb?

In the process of looking at the BIOS to see if something there could be changed I changed something to see if it would work... It didnt... I dont remember what it was that I changed but instead of going back to what I changed and rechanging it back I in my stupidity clicked on reset to optimized defaults... and to make a long story short... ive gotten it to try to boot and it gets past all the bios stuff but now windows wont start up and I havent been able to access the boot menu to see if linux on a separate hard drive will boot...

So basically im screwed right now... any advice? Other than stop being dumb?

Nathan

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Good points from and — here are a few deeper, practical checks and explanations that help when two different-capacity PC3200 kits act like only one set exists.

Mixed-size problems are usually not a Windows issue but a hardware/memory-controller one. Different capacity sticks often have different internal "ranks" and SPD timing/voltage tables. The memory controller (on Athlon64 CPUs) and the NF4 chipset expect channel pairs to be compatible; when they are not, the firmware will sometimes ignore a channel or remap memory in ways that make part of it invisible. Also check the printed specs on each stick: matching DRAM voltage and JEDEC timings is important — mismatches can prevent full population from working reliably.

Useful steps not covered yet: boot a small utility to read SPD (CPU-Z on Windows or dmidecode/lshw on Linux) and record each stick's part number, voltage and timings. Use a memtest86+ boot disc to validate each module and to show how much RAM the system actually maps before OS boots. In the BIOS, try setting DRAM voltage and timings manually to the slowest/highest values shown on any stick (within safe limits) rather than leaving adaptive/auto values. If stability improves, a permanent solution is to use matched modules or matched-channel pairs. If the BIOS behaves oddly after changes, check for controller-mode changes (SATA/IDE/RAID) and use the platform's recovery tools rather than blind flashing; if you choose to update the DFI BIOS for better SPD handling, follow the vendor guide and power-fail protections.

Final notes: label sticks, avoid ESD, document original BIOS settings before changing anything, and use memtest/OS tools to confirm the installed and usable RAM rather than assuming totals from slot population.

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Member Avatar for Turendur

Oh Here is my specs:

DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D
OCZ PowerStream 520w
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice OEM 2.4 ghz
Lian-Li V1000B-Plus Case
OCZ Platinum Edition PC3200 2x1gb Dual Channel
OCZ Gold Edition PC3200 2x512mb Dual Channel
BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT OC 256MB PCIe
NEC 3550A Beige Dvd reader/writer
NEC 3550A Black Dvd reader/writer
Scythe Ninja heatsink
D-Link Wireless Card... dont remember model... can get it later tonight thou

Member Avatar for joshSCH

hmm.. first of all, it's never a good idea to install different ram like that..

Reset to optimized defaults? Have you gone back through the bios to see what has changed? Go through and make sure your hd is there, and that most settings are correct.. It actually might help if you power down, and take out the cmos battery for a bit. Then replace the battery and see if that helps any..

Member Avatar for Turendur

Ok... i reset the cmos via taking the battery out... and I also took out the 2x512 ram and it works just fine... after a bit of work around... it seems to be running stable...

also out of my own ignorance... im sure I could find it somewhere in the forums... what is the proper way... and I know this is not in the right forum... but...

Member Avatar for joshSCH

Having 3 ram chips with 1 gig, 512, and 512 will not always register well with the mb. Depending on how old your motherboard is, you may be able to get the system running with 2 gigs.. but more than likely the system will either just recognize the 512 chips or the 1024 chip. I suppose you could try it again in different orders to see if it can even be read properly.. but I think the only thing you can do is buy another gig stick of ram :-/

Perhaps someone else knows something that I don't, though..

Member Avatar for fren

In addition to the above post.

This is only my opinion but I think you can run all your sticks together in a single channel mode. Mix them in different dimm slots. I am not 100% sure but as I know it is also safe to run any AMD processors in a single channel mode.

One more thing, I think WinME can't handle more than 512 MB of RAM. Try to shift to WinXP.

Member Avatar for Turendur

Ok to help explain the situation a bit more... my mobo has 4 dimm slots I have 2x1gb sticks and 2x512mb so the computer should see 3gb total... they are exactly the same except for their size... I am running WinXP and I also am running Fedora Core 7 on separate hard drives...

But the bios only recognizes 1 set not both sets...

I am going to play around with the sets tonight and try different configurations of the sticks...

How would I get the sticks to run single channel?

Member Avatar for fren

I thought it was WinME. Okay place your 2 x 1GB in the first two dimm slots (nearest to the processor) and the rest to the remaining slots. See if it works.

Member Avatar for Turendur

Yeah I will try that and let you know how it goes.

Member Avatar for fren

Try one stick at a time. In this case you will be able to detect a bad dimm slot.

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