Ram Woes

[Servo]

I have a home built machine running Win XP with a Gigabyte mbo that
supports 2 gig of ram. When I first built the system I installed a 512
meg Corsair ram stick and it worked perfectly, a month ago I added an
IDENTICAL ram stick, and it worked perfectly. Yesterday I added another
IDENTICAL ran stick and it brought my system to its knees. The BIOS
recognizes the new RAM OK, and the system boots up but very slowly.
Programs that used to work great keep crashing. Is there something I
need to know about running Win XP with more than 1 gig of ram?
TIA for any help!
--
Servo

"I don't know what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off
whatever it is"

tservo100 at ameritech dot net
Slow, fiery death to all spammers!

 

[Jim Macklin]

Often there are limitations on the size or location of RAM
stick combinations.

Also, have tried only the latest RAM, it may be defective.
Also, be sure that exactly the same specs RAM it could
possibly be mislabeled.


| I have a home built machine running Win XP with a Gigabyte
mbo that
| supports 2 gig of ram. When I first built the system I
installed a 512
| meg Corsair ram stick and it worked perfectly, a month ago
I added an
| IDENTICAL ram stick, and it worked perfectly. Yesterday I
added another
| IDENTICAL ran stick and it brought my system to its knees.
The BIOS
| recognizes the new RAM OK, and the system boots up but
very slowly.
| Programs that used to work great keep crashing. Is there
something I
| need to know about running Win XP with more than 1 gig of
ram?
| TIA for any help!
| --
| Servo
|
| "I don't know what the hell's in there, but it's weird and
pissed off
| whatever it is"
|
| tservo100 at ameritech dot net
| Slow, fiery death to all spammers!

 

[Frank]

I have a home built machine running Win XP with a Gigabyte mbo that
supports 2 gig of ram. When I first built the system I installed a 512
meg Corsair ram stick and it worked perfectly, a month ago I added an
IDENTICAL ram stick, and it worked perfectly. Yesterday I added another
IDENTICAL ran stick and it brought my system to its knees. The BIOS
recognizes the new RAM OK, and the system boots up but very slowly.
Programs that used to work great keep crashing. Is there something I
need to know about running Win XP with more than 1 gig of ram?
TIA for any help!
--
Servo

"I don't know what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off
whatever it is"

tservo100 at ameritech dot net
Slow, fiery death to all spammers!

You don't say but is it possible that you had 2 sticks of RAM which
enabled duel channel and when you put in the 3rd stick it reverted
back to single channel mode???????

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Most Gigabyte motherboards that have 3 memory slots can only support "dual
channel" memory in the first two slots. If the first two memory slots have
"dual channel" memory, you can not use the third slot.

 

[Guest]

three sticks of ram rarely ever works in any motherboard

regardless of the dual memory controller or not. most mobo manufacturers use cheaper power regulation on the ram slots and as susch when you put in more than the average 2 sticks you get memory errors due to a voltage drop from the unexpected load on the circuit. this leads to several read/write retries which looks like s l oo oo oo w performance

this is the reason the nforce series boards have issues with a third stick not a design flaw in the chipset but an implementation of the ram slots power regulation. some boards work fine and these are usually from intel, asus and abit (you get what you pay for). cheaper boards = cheaper components = flakier operation (not always but mostly the rule)

if you want three sticks of ram = 1.5 gb sell your ram and get 2 1 gb sticks instead for .5 gb more ram for roughly a bit more $$. again most boards will not take 3 sticks no matter, so unless you're looking at a $150+ purchase for a new mobo going with larger ram sizes and 2 sticks rather than trying for the impossible

 

[Sept1967]

Running 2 pairs of 512 SpecTek PC2700 in an Asus P4R800-VM with no problems,
dual channel.
XP Pro SP1 luvs 2 Gig of Ram .