BIOS reports the following:
Base Memory 640K
Extended Memory 1047552K
Total Memory 1048576K
It also reports that I am running in Dual Mode. I thought memory
modules had to be the same to run in dual mode.
Thanks,
Wildbill
It looks like the BIOS is able to read the SPD on the modules
OK, but CPUZ is not. It is hard for software writers to extract
info from Asus motherboards, because the SMBUS is hidden from
them and Asus doesn't want to give info on them. Sandra has a
module called spdinfo, but it only works for a limited set
of motherboards as well. Proper support has to be worked out
laboriously, one motherboard design at a time.
For dual channel on the Nforce2, Ben says it will run in dual
channel mode, as long as there is some memory available on
each channel. Here are some examples:
--------- --------- It is like dealing from
| 256MB | | | two decks of cards, and
--------- | 512MB | alternating between using
--------- | | the two decks. In this
| 256MB | | | example, all of memory gives
--------- --------- dual channel performance.
2x256MB DIMMs + 1x512MB DIMM
Here is a second example:
--------- Here, only the bottom
| | portion of the two stacks
| 512MB | is matched, so the bottom
--------- | | 512MB gives dual channel
| 256MB | | | operation, and the top
--------- --------- 256MB does not.
1x256MB DIMM + 1x512MB DIMM
I really want to see someone write a memory bandwidth test
that demonstrates the correctness of these two figures. The
test should time how long it takes to write blocks of memory.
In the examples above, it would need to test the time to
write each of the (4) or (3) chunks of 256MB each. If the
two figures above are correct, the top 256MB of the second
figure should be slower than any of the other blocks tested,
by something like 4 or 5%.
HTH,
Paul
