Memory has different value in two PCs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Smith
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J

John Smith

Hi,

I just bought a 2nd hand 512M 133 SDRAM. When I put it (on its own) in an
Athlon 800 PC it says it is a 256M chip but when I put it in an old K6/2 500
PC it reports it as 511M.

Anyone got any idea why this is?

Regards,

John Smith.
 
from the wonderful person said:
Hi,

I just bought a 2nd hand 512M 133 SDRAM. When I put it (on its own) in an
Athlon 800 PC it says it is a 256M chip but when I put it in an old K6/2 500
PC it reports it as 511M.

Anyone got any idea why this is?
Click to expand...

Yep, the Athlon board probably does not support the memory chip density
used to build the module - you need one built with more, smaller, chips.
Google for 'missing memory density' or similar for all the grizzly
details.
 
John Smith said:
Hi,

I just bought a 2nd hand 512M 133 SDRAM. When I put it (on its own) in an
Athlon 800 PC it says it is a 256M chip but when I put it in an old K6/2 500
PC it reports it as 511M.

Anyone got any idea why this is?

Regards,

John Smith.
Click to expand...

Wow, ironically, the socket 7 board is more advanced. Likely, it is a
16-chip DIMM (2-sides), so it would be a 256x16 DIMM. So, each chip is
256Megabits. For some reason, the Athlon board doesn't accept 256Mbit
chips, but will accept 128Mbit chips (1/2 of the 256Mbit; so it reads 256MB
of the 512MB DIMM). So, each chip is only being used 50% in the Athlon.
There is nothing wrong with the DIMM.

If it is single-sided, though, then it makes things a wee bit weirder.
Because then it would be using a 512x8 (eight 512Mbit chips). It's a
stranger configuration, since 512Mbit chips are more expensive. Even
stranger, is that a Socket 7 motherboard is able to use a 512Mbit chip. I
don't believe I've seen any that do. It would certainly be possible, just
rare. Likely, though, it is double-sided.

By double-sided, I mean 16 chips, and single-sided means 8 chips (or
less..but a 1024x4 isn't likely at all).
 
John said:
Hi,

I just bought a 2nd hand 512M 133 SDRAM. When I put it (on its own) in an
Athlon 800 PC it says it is a 256M chip but when I put it in an old K6/2 500
PC it reports it as 511M.

Anyone got any idea why this is?
Click to expand...

sometimes you need to install the latest version of the motherboard's Bios to be
able to work with the newer, larger ram module sizes.
 
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