2CPU.com » News » May 2002 » Memory Problems? Read this...

I see a pretty much constant stream of people having memory problems in our forums. I imagine that we aren't unique in that, either. The general attitude in the hardware community seems to be "if it fits, it'll work." It may not surprise some of you to find out that this is not the case, but it's rare to see anyone talk specifics. So when I came across this excellent article at overclockers.com about how memory placement can (drastically) affect stability, I thought it deserved some linkage:

The upshot of all this is that having four DIMM slots DOES NOT mean that you can stuff them with as much RAM as you'd like. Motherboard manufacturers are a little coy when it comes to fessing up to exactly what their boards support - their website spec sheets don't usually get into these specifics, and some manuals gloss over what is possible.

Anyone who builds their own boxen (which means most of us, I'd imagine) shouldn't miss this.

10/10/2000 07:44 AM: Memory Performance: Part 2 by nitro_fish
Well here's the second part from the boys of the FiringSquad. More memory perfromance goodness now where did I put that link ...... oh here it is :P Ideally, you could store all your applications in...

10/04/2000 10:01 PM: Memory Performance: Part 1 by J0rdan
Posting this from Ontario (I get around don't I?). Firingsquad has posted up an article looking into a common topic now adays, Memory Performance. With VIA's adoption of the PC133 platform last year, ...

allansaunders SMP Qualified Posts: 123 Joined: 2002-04-23

#15441 Posted on: 05/12/2002 07:15 AM For what it's worth, I have had the experience of position being crucial. I have the MSI 694D pro2, which is a Via chipset, so my exp. is with SDRAM, not DDR. But it is exactly as this article suggests. I just built this box, and started out with a 512 meg stick in slot 0. After a few weeks, it was safe to spend a few more bucks on the box and I got another stick, instant blue screen. Naturally I assumed the stick was bad, so I downloaded a sampling of the memory testing utilities available (DocMem, etc..) and sure enough, many fails. However, if I put stick 2 in slot 0 alone, no fails! After playing musical slots for awhile (which sounds vaguely pornographic), I discovered that populating slot 0 and slot 2 was the key to a satisfying and complete booting experience. I'm just glad I'm greedy, and started out with a 512, rather than having worked in increments of 256, which seemingly would have limited me to 512 total, assuming the issue applied to smaller sticks. Allan Is it s'posed to smoke like that?

Kampf Pixelated Posts: 554 Joined: 2000-04-21

#15442 Posted on: 05/12/2002 12:39 PM I went over this briefly in my VP6 review. The VP6 supports DIMMs at 133(+) in all four slots, while the Epox board wouldn't do more than 100 if DIMM3 was used. On a slight tangent, i recently saw a 512mb dimm go between 3 friends, none of their machines recognizing it as more than 256. It took me a little while, but i finally remember that the LX and BX chipsets didn't have support for anything larger than 256. A couple Apple products and a bizarre ASUS S479 box.

JEC252 Too much time on my hands Posts: 3701 Joined: 2001-05-23

#15443 Posted on: 05/13/2002 01:21 AM I'm running four sticks of Crucial 256 Mb CL2 double sided SDRAM on a Tiger 230T (Via 133T) right now, and I found the key to balancing the ying and the yang was to install in pairs. No idea why, but my Sandra scores shot up and instead of a bluescreen every week or so I now get none. I tried running a few memory utilities and sure enough, it works with agressive memory timings only when memory is installed in pairs. Go figure. It even worked fine when populating slots 2 and 3 for a pair, or 0 and 3, or any combination. Wierd. Once again we've saved civilization as we know it. And the good news is, they're not gonna prosecute!

Abaddon Xeon^2 Posts: 81 Joined: 2001-11-09

#15444 Posted on: 05/13/2002 02:49 AM For what's worth it, I have an Asus P3B-F with four double-sided unbuffered 256MB PC133 DIMM's and I've overclocked it even to 133MHz (can you imagine the load?); it's running for two and a half years now totaly without any problems A few months back I purchased another P3B-F and this baby does the same trick One of the reasons I don't buy, for instance, a VIA chipset based board is that I never could find any (clear) info about supported DRAM chip configs and DIMM configs on their site; a manufacturer who doesn't give that info, sells, IMO, junk! Else he would release that info, well wouldn't he? Intel is extremely clear and you can find lots of info about their chipsets and memory controller hubs. AMD's site is, in some lesser extent than Intel's, also very clear about these matters. Well, it's for at least two years a main reason for me just to stay with Intel and recently also AMD (and not the one's with VIA southbridge) chipsets (I've also a 760MP running flawlessly with eight banks of reg DIMM's, and with tighter memory timings). If you want to use much memory and fill up your banks, don't go for undocumented crap, that's my opinion.

JEC252 Too much time on my hands Posts: 3701 Joined: 2001-05-23

#15445 Posted on: 05/13/2002 03:51 AM Lol, I know, but I do alot of graphics work and for once, I'd rather have Via than Serverworks (besides, at the time I couldn't afford Serverworks). The good news is, Crucial is usually pretty good about selling you the right stuff, you just have to play musical slots. Once again we've saved civilization as we know it. And the good news is, they're not gonna prosecute!

2CPU.com » News » May 2002 » Memory Problems? Read this...