Need for speed bsod?

[HaMsTeYr]

Haha, i don't turn sarcastic without reason and trust me there was nothing to be sarcastic about in the first few posts. Rest assured i don't start anything unwarranted.

I doubt that the original thread starter will actually see this message now though, as 5 months is a long time and he's most likely got a new computer or at least upgraded already.

And yes, 3gb is plenty for vista and games these days, though 3gb is not really a standard number so i'm guessing its a 2gb and 1gb stick paired together. Also he might not be using custom hardware and possibly OEM builds like Dell or HP. I've heard that in some occasions adding rams that come from different manufacturers into the additional slots can cause issues but i'm not too sure about that.

It just boils down now to how and whether he managed to solve his issue. If not, it would be good to know if it WAS indeed a Dell machine or what not. Dell desktops can be pretty shoddy as i've used one at my past workplace before that had a board that didn't allow more than 2 USB devices plugged in at one time to start up. I found that rather retarded haha

 

[rmdl51]

Oh, those Hell... err, sorry..Dell PC's are well known for give you free headaches.

I think the 3GB comes with the excuse to push the limit on the 32-bit platform which as far as i know is the maximum supported, I don't like either a Laptop with 3 GB because I don't know how it perform with that setup, it's very likely the way you said, 2x1GB & 2x512MB because I don't think there are such thing as 1.5GB sticks right?

I think also he can check for the compatible cards list for pro street with EA, I remember my self trying to run True crime on my old 9600XT and it just keep sending me back to the desktop and a few times BSOD, a friend was able to run it on his old 9200 and I had better CPU and RAM, I remember I contact Activision and they told me the 9600XT wasn't compatible with their game.

what do you think? could the 8400GS be incompatible with Pro street? I think there's a slight chance but there is chance

 

[HaMsTeYr]

Yes, i'm an owner of a dell inspiron 5150 and i've sent it back for servicing no less than 10 times in this few years of its lifespan..

As i'm aware, 3gb doesn't work with much advantage on 32 bit systems, and can only show their potential when you're running a 64 bit OS... though i could be wrong. I have a friend who has a laptop with 3GB hahaha 1x2gb 1x1gb, not to mention with an 8800M GTX... he runs xp though so perhaps he can feel the difference haha. And no, there is no such thing as single 1.5GB sticks

Well, with the 9600XT, i'm pretty sure it has issues with Direct x9.0c, being the old card that it is. That is at least what i read online, so that could be the possible reason why it kept returning it to the desktop, that and perhaps shoddy drivers. ATi has never been famous for their drivers unfortunately... I'm not sure what Activition told you but i NEVER ever contact game companies, they just tell you a pile of junk at times. My guess is that you had messed up drivers really.

the 8400 GS should be compatible with Pro steet, if not just look for driver updates or rollback to past working drivers. I've had issues where latest drivers didn't work with some games and caused graphical issues, and yes strangely enough to my ATi cards.

 

[rmdl51]

It will be interesting to see how a manufacturer will setup the ram on a 3GB system, I'm very curious about it, why? because anything over 2GB on a 32-bit system could lead to unwanted issues.

My old computer was a P4 3.4Ghz with ASUS Mobo P4P800E-Dx, using XP I put 4x1GB on it (I didn't know back then about the 32-bit limitation) and it recognizes only 3.25GB or ram, so I took out 1 GB and I keep using 3 GB, neither I knew that setup will bottleneck the speed of the ram because unpaired sticks are not able to take advantage of the DDR, so I rather took out another 1 GB stick and keep setup as 2x1GB as the performance was way much better, I'm not just talking about gaming

So, that's why I always suggest to have paired ram sticks, identically the same or at least same speed and memory to have a good performance on DDR.

Before I wouldn't believe it, but when I start benchmarking a few systems with Sandra I do believe how better is the performance working with paired sticks.

 

[HaMsTeYr]

I've never actually quite seen a manufacturer offering 3gb OOTB. You'd probably have to go trough customising by yourself heh. I'm pretty sure you can't do that in the dell site as well haha

Yeah there is not much point in running more than 2gb in XP if you ask me, but its definitely a plus in vista or any other 64 bit system. Maybe even 32 vista runs well with over 2gb, i've not tried to know. My Old system was an AMD Athlon 3000+ on an Abit KV8-Po board if i'm not mistakened... had 2gb of ram in it but it performed very well, could even play Call Of Duty 4 with the occasional dip.

Regarding pairing ram sticks, thats why many manufactures now have "kits" so that you can actually make full use of dual channel DDR, if not if i'm not mistakened, you can pull up your computers specs in either CPU-Z or some other program and it'll display your ram as 1/2 is original like DDR 400 if you were using DDR2 800 ram.

It does help but from what i've seen the margin isn't really all that huge... i might be wrong though as those were old benchmarks. Hopefully my Patriot Extreme Performance 4-4-4-12 2x1GB kit DDR2 800 performs as well as i hope it would haha