Hello
I have a Asus A7V333 motherboard with two Kingston 256mb 333Mhz DDR PC2700
DIMM on board, leaving one memory slot free.
I want to upgrade to 1024mb
I'm thinking of purchasing one 512mb to put in the remaing slot. Opinions
about mixing 512mb with 256mb seem to vary. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
John Hellingsworth
Asus originally spec'd that A7V333 would only run mem bus @ 133MHz clock
rate (DDR266) with all three slots filled, but still 166MHz mem bus with
only two slots occupied. However, given the chipset (or any Athlon
chipset for that matter) you're as well off NOT running it in asynchronous
mode, rather synchronous to FSB, which IIRC, is not the default for that
board.
I seem to recall that bios version 1016 has been reported as most stable,
even moreso than a later bios version. You might try that bios and if
it's still showing errors after several hours of testing with
http://www.memtest86.com then enter bios and manually set memory timings
slower (larger numbers). Also do not use the "turbo" memory setting.
Further, there are vDim jumpers on the board above and to the left of the
AGP slot. I don't recall what the issue was with those but I "thought"
the manual had the jumper settings backwards of their actual functions.
Do a Google search to find out more about this issue, though by now Asus
may be offering an edited manual that corrects this error. vDimm
shouldn't need raised much if at all.
There is no issue particular to mixing 256MB and 512MB modules. You'd
have the same issue if you'd filled all with 512MB modules. Maximum
stability margin and/or overclock potential seems to be by using only two
256MB modules in the 1st and 3rd slots. I'd try it with new memory,
preferribly PC3200 due to it's support for future use (potential) then if
it doesn't work then the choices are pulling a 256MB module, returning
memory, or replacing the board. FWIW, nForce2, KT600, or soon-to-come
KT880, all offer better performance than KT333 chipset.
