Non dual channel RAM on P4P800 VM

  • Thread starter Thread starter RunningMan
  • Start date Start date
R

RunningMan

I recently swapped out a motherboard and installed a P4P800VM. I
happened to have 4 sticks of Kingston Value RAM (1 GB each), which is
clearly labeled NOT dual channel compatible. Is there any way to use
all four sticks on this motherboard? I can use up to three with no
problem, but adding the fourth causes the machine to try to run in
dual channel mode, which obviously doesn't work. The machine boots,
but it takes 10 minutes to load the OS, and runs like an 8086 on
128KB. Using only three GB works fine, as it runs in single channel
mode.

Is there any BIOS sertting or something that I can change to force
single channel mode, even with all 4 slots occupied with identical
RAM? Like I said, I'm running fine with 3 GB, but it sure would be
nice if I could add that 4th.
 
RunningMan said:
I recently swapped out a motherboard and installed a P4P800VM. I
happened to have 4 sticks of Kingston Value RAM (1 GB each), which is
clearly labeled NOT dual channel compatible. Is there any way to use
Click to expand...

I don't know how this would be, since dual channel doesn't impose any
special requirements on the memory, contrary to what some people seem to
think..
all four sticks on this motherboard? I can use up to three with no
problem, but adding the fourth causes the machine to try to run in
dual channel mode, which obviously doesn't work. The machine boots,
but it takes 10 minutes to load the OS, and runs like an 8086 on
128KB. Using only three GB works fine, as it runs in single channel
mode.
Click to expand...

This isn't a problem I would expect from RAM incompatibility, nor would
I expect that dual channel would have anything to do with it. Maybe the
BIOS is setting up the MTRRs wrong and some of your memory is getting
marked uncacheable or something? Are you running the latest BIOS?

You are not going to be able to use all 4GB of the RAM on that board in
any case, since some of the address space is used up by PCI/AGP devices
and the chipset doesn't support remapping memory above 4GB. You should
be able to get 3.5 or so though.
 
Back
Top