Help me please i am a lil' confused

  • Thread starter Thread starter 113
  • Start date Start date
1

113

I have the ASUS A7N8X-X mobo with 512MB(2x256MB) DDR RAM. I initial
wanted to purchase and install another set of 512(2x256MB) DDR RAM.
But... the problem is that there are only 3 DIMM slots in total and
just 1 spare. I desperatly need more RAM cos system runs too slow
sometimesespecially when using limewire to download. Does anyone
haveany idea on what I can do. Also note that I have a small budget so
cheapest solution would help. Thanks!!!
 
"113" said:
I have the ASUS A7N8X-X mobo with 512MB(2x256MB) DDR RAM. I initial
wanted to purchase and install another set of 512(2x256MB) DDR RAM.
But... the problem is that there are only 3 DIMM slots in total and
just 1 spare. I desperatly need more RAM cos system runs too slow
sometimesespecially when using limewire to download. Does anyone
haveany idea on what I can do. Also note that I have a small budget so
cheapest solution would help. Thanks!!!
Click to expand...

Buy a single 512MB stick and plug it in ? That will give you a total
of 2x256 + 1x512 = 1024MB.

The A7N8X-X is a single channel motherboard. As far as I know,
there are no special constraints on RAM usage. There is no need
to match everything on a single channel motherboard. And with
Nforce2, even if you owned one of the dual channel versions of
the motherboard, the Nforce2 has more relaxed matching
requirements than other boards anyway.

If you find your new 512MB stick is not working out for you,
remove one of the 256MB sticks and run 1x256 and 1x512 for
a total of 768MB. Or try using the "Memory Frequency" settings
in the BIOS and try a setting like 83% with the three sticks,
to stabilize them.

Always test new memory with memtest86+ from www.memtest.org .
That program will format a floppy for you, and you can boot
the computer with that floppy. A 640x480 screen will appear
and you should let it run for at least two full passes. To
accept a new collection of RAM modules and whatever BIOS
setting you end up using, there should be no memory errors
reported on the screen of the memtest86+ program. At
that point, it should be safe to boot into Windows. Do
not boot Windows if there are still errors being reported.

Once back in Windows, download a copy of Prime95 from
mersenne.org/freesoft.htm . There should be an option in
that program, called "Torture Test". It does a calculation
with a known answer and is a sensitive test for memory
problems. If you can run that program using the mixed FFT
mode for about four hours or so, and no errors are
reported, you have completed your testing and are ready
to use the computer for real work. Bad memory will report
an error in about 30 minutes or so.

If any of the tests report errors, you can try testing the
memory one stick at a time, to find the culprit. If each
stick tested individually doesn't report an error, then
I would place the number of sticks you want to use into
the computer, and use the "Memory Frequency" setting to
try and eliminate the memory error problem.

Hope that helps,
Paul
 
Thanks mate. was plannin to do that but my cousin was tellin me that i
cant mix 2 to types of ram together, so got a lil' confused.
 
Anyway, I feel quite sure that this memory increase won't help you that much
with Limewire.
Most P2P programms are light weight load for the processor and none of them
require big amount of memory to run.
Did you try with a clean install of OS?
What OS are you using?
 
113 said:
Thanks mate. was plannin to do that but my cousin was tellin me that i
cant mix 2 to types of ram together, so got a lil' confused.
Click to expand...
That is definitely true if you have dual channel board, but not so critical
on your board. Probably one more 256 stick would be enough for most uses. I
don't know anything about limewire, but I doubt that most downloading would
be speeded up with more memory.
 
Back
Top