Hello there, i just switched the broken HDD on an old PC with another one, formatted and installed Windows XP SP3 on it. The motherboard on the PC - nForce 3 250GB. When I got to 'My Computer'-->'Properties' it says 1.81 GHz 256MB of RAM, while there are 1.2GB of RAM. I checked my hardware using CPU-Z, and what I got is what I really have inside the PC: 2 X 512MB 1 X 256 MB and a total of 1.2GB the specifications of the three cards is the same, all PC3200(200MHz), and the only difference between them is the CAS Latency which is 2.5 on the 256MB card and 3 on the two 512MBs. Anyone knows what might be wrong?
Hi, I am not sure but maybe it is the difference in CAS latency causing the problem. I think the ram would try to run at the lowest CAS latency that is installed, but it can cause stability issues if the RAM wasn't designed for it. So if the 2 512 sticks are trying to match the 256 and it makes them unstable, I would guess that windows couldnt use it and then not give them addresses? But when you took out the 256 stick, there was no more conflict so the ram runs and is recognized with no problems. Was windows xp recognizing all 3 sticks before you reinstalled it?
Hmm, sounds like a bad stick of ram, I would go with the one you pulled out or you can just try running with the 256mb one to see if it's really bad, try running memtest, with all of them in the slots.
