Hi This is my first post, I am having trouble with my pc memory. I have 1Gig (DDR2 pc4300)of memory and thought i will upgrade to 2Gb so i purchased 2x512 mb(DDR2 pc4200) of ram and now have 2048 mb configured 4x512mb all are CL4 I can not get all 4 to work together on dual channel,the pc freezes/colour distorts and i have to restart,i notice that the Cpu goes up and down up to 100% usage when i open programmes and sometimes just loading the desktop.This happens 8 times out of 10 but will always happen within 10 miniute or so. If i run three modules 3x512mb it will run better but it will crash after say 40 min if i open 2 or 3 programes.I have run memtet 86+ over 5 passes but it detects no errors and also takes ages lol. I am thinking it could be a problem with the cpu but it runs ok with 2x512mb apart from the odd freeze about once a day. Memory shows on system and i dont think it is bad. I have the page file set @1578mb which is system managed,whether that makes any difference. Any ideas why it will run 2x512mb ok but not 4x512mb or sometmes 3x512mb. John K. Acer T180 Amd 64x2 4200 Installed memory 2x512mb (works ok) nvidia 6100 n405 160gig Hd vista premium.
There's a known issue with the Athlon64 design where you can have some trouble running 4 sticks at 400MHz, however, You may be able to go into BIOS and set it up at DDR400 speeds manually. Just keep that in mind as you might have trouble booting or with stability, which can happen when forcing the option.
Is that right...you would of thought Amd would have a patch for that or at least a tec doc. what would i look for in the bios as i can only find a change of setting for the graphics.
i think it's under "System Performance" check your motherboard manual, if you don't have one or can't find it use PCWizard to identify the motherboard & visit the motherboard manufacturers site for a manual BTW: swapfile / pagefile would be better if it was set to twice the amount of installed RAM
Have downloaded pc wizard,lots of helpful info, no bios name specified have had a good look at the bios screen but no options for ddr2 speeds. Page file i changed to 1.5x and 2.0x didn't seem to make a difference so set back to system managed. I have read that cheaper ram can cause problems due to performance cant see why as although i put in pc4200 when pc4300 was in there,the ratings are the same 533mh cl4. The original ram is acer badged,i put in Kingston value ram. Could this have a bearing on this? Im pretty sure the memory is not bad as i have ran memtest 86+for hours. This is begining to annoy me and am about to do damage to ...well anything. I dont really want to take it for testing memory/pc,Guess i`ll just have to revert back to 1 gig.
the settings are probably in <Advanced Chipset> then <DDR Timings> look everywhere & in all submenu's as every BIOS is different if you allow Win to manage the pagefile, Win continually resizes the pagefile however if you set the size, Win will not resize it & spend more time doing the stuff you want, also some software requires a very large pagefile to run at all, basically it will state the system requirements either on the box or on the software's website, however, if you don't use any such software, set the pagefile how you like possibly, basically you have probably bought better RAM than the Acer branded no, the RAM is not bad unless you purchase another gig of the same brand you bought, and sell the original Acer branded RAM to a friend or on ebay
I will try setting the page file size to 3000mb,what should i set for maximumto? There is a Dram setting,which reads for systems with OS2 operatng system with 64mb or greater Enable/Disabe. Would Acpi have anything to do with it? The strange thing is i have just run it with orig memory...all ok. Ran it with just 2 new memory....froze. Running it now with 2 old + 1 new .....seems ok so far. Run with all 4 ....froze Could this point to one of these sticks being bad hence it wont run on all 4 and when i tried it with 3 Yesterdayi put the bad 1 in. The only thing that eludes me is memtest and microsoft online crash tests show no errors when run with all 4. Btw cheers for the help.
well always working a two sticks of 1gb is better than 4 sticks of 512mb beacuse two sticks will drain less power and serve you more faster one of the sticks may have a different cas latency rather than the value of 4 and can't be loaded on dual channel scheme so it may be causing the problem pagefile is enough at 3gb, as games like stalker or applications like autocad needs that much, larger pagefile will decrease your performance as the system will have to work with hdd more have you written the case of pc4300 and pc4200 wrong or the kits have the info like that, this is too important. microsoft's hardware tests worth nothing they always find the system running perfect, as not using windows too much (just for playing games) i use linux and tiger generally on my pc they use the memory and system resources more effective and faster so try to download suse 10 to check your system's stability if you have the chance to spend a little more money, trade them with two sticks of corsair 1 gb xms2 ddr2-675 rams, they will serve you way better and stable also bringing you the availibility of oc (up to 880mhz without problems i tried before) by the way when building the dual channel system use only the same brands, oem producers are using no name rams so that might be the problem again
