RAM Upgrade Problem

[maxximilian]

Trying to upgrade the RAM in my rig....some bizarre developments.....

First the facts...

Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra
Running on 512 MB of Kingston RAM, trying to upgrade to 1 Gig. PC2700
Windows XP-SP1
AWARD BIOS
3 RAM slots

I built this rig myself about three years ago. Originally it had only 256 MB (manufacturer unknown) of RAM. A little while ago....I wanted to boost the RAM so I bought a stick of 512 and tried to slap it in. The machine would not boot and after trying many things I simply chalked it up to manufacturer mismatch and just removed the old 256 and left in the new 512. Not the big upgrade i was hoping for...but I lived with doubling the RAM.

Now here we are months later and I want to upgrade again....this time to 1 Gig. Remembering the manufacture mismatch I diagnosed earlier....I bought exactly, precisely the same stick that was already running flawlessly. A Kingston PC2700, 512 MB stick. So now with two identical sticks...I put the new stick in slot two. The machine posted and passed memory check....but would not go into windows. Just a black screen with a cursor. Several reboots later...no luck.

I went back inside and switched the new stick to slot three and rebooted. This time I got into windows....but it was a mess. Memory errors, no warning reboots, wrong information about hard drive space....all kinds of freaky stuff. So then I started playing around with order and slots....even leaving slot one open. That arrangement didn't even get past the POST....and no other arrangement worked either. Got either nothing...or a very unstable wiindows.

Then I installed the new stick only in slot one....and the machine ran fine. So the new stick isn't defective. The machine will run fine on either stick (any stick) as long it is alone and in slot one. Add another stick (any stick) and it goes haywire.

What gives?

Help!

BTW...I went inside BIOS several times and don't see anything in there about setting the ammount of RAM to recognize...and it is in fact recognized at the POST anyway. It just doesn't work after that....

[maxximilian]

Update.....

Just for the hell of it....so I could say I tried everything I knew how to do.....

I restored the Fail-safe BIOS defaults....whatever they were. So far I am running on both sticks for about 10 minutes. Which nine minutes longer than it ran the last time I tried putting in the new stick.

However....I don't know if I am fixed yet. And even if I am fixed...I would like to know what went wrong before that would have been BIOS related. Now I do recall experimenting with overclocking a couple years ago, but that was processor only...and when I was done playing I restored things back to normal then. I only clocked FSB speed....not RAM or voltage.

Anyway....any input will be helpful.

[eddds40]

Have you checked if their is a bios upgrade for your MB?

[maxximilian]

Yeah...I checked the Gigabyte site and the only BIOS they have is dated from 2002. I am not sure when I bought this one....but fairly sure it was after that so I figure my BIOS is likely already newer.

So far it seems to be stable....but I hate unsolved mysteries. What possible setting in BIOS would have accounted for the problem, if in fact restoring defaults fixed it.

Now this critter is equipped with Dual BIOS....so if somehow the one gets corrupted...the other automatically restores it. As of now, though...it apears to to have benn BIOS related.

Hmmmm..........

[Tinkertron]

I hope that the Mzh were also matching.

[maxximilian]

They matched....

I made sure the RAM module I bought was the exact same one I had bought months earlier....just to be safe. Same size, speed and manufacturer..

Kingston KVR333/512R PC2700 DDR

[Tinkertron]

are you sure that the "memory banks" are the same? in some case the slots are regular simms and the other two could be ddr banks. be sure that the banks to are all the same too.

[maxximilian]

The way this board is set up is it has three DIMM sockets....that can accomodate 4 banks of memory. Since the memory I am using is double-sided...I am restricted to using just two of the sockets since I max out before even getting to the third.

The manual explains it better.....

The motherboard has 3 dual inline memory module (DIMM) sockets, but it can only support a maximum of 4 banks of DDR memory. DDR sockets 1 uses 2 banks, DDR sockets 2&3 share the remaining 2 banks. Please refer to the following tables for possible memory configurations supported. The BIOS will automatically detects memory type and size. To install the memory module, just push it vertically into the DIMM socket .The DIMM module can only fit in one direction due to the notch. Memory size can vary between sockets.

Now...the "table" the manual mentions shows two possible configurations for two double-sided DDR sticks. 1-2 and 1-3. I am using the 1-3 configuration. So far it seems to be working. Which is making a believer out of me that the poblem was in the BIOS and was fixed by the fail-safe defaulting. We will see when I reboot tomorrow.

[SuperSparks]

There are a lot of hidden setting in the BIOS on Gigabyte mobos, which you can get to with Ctrl+F1. Those settngs deal a lot of memory timing stuff and it could well have been something in there that had been changed without you even being aware of it.

[maxximilian]

Thanks Supersparks.....I have been in there a hundred times and never knew about extra settings. Gigabyte has a little program that came with the motherboard that allowed you to overclock from inside windows. It was called Easy Tune 4....or something like that. I bet that little proggie had access to settings I couldn't even see....

Might be the explanation I am looking for....

So far she is running fine with the new RAM now.