Ram Troubles

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james_k1988

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First of all would like to say Merry Christmas to all at Techspot (especailly the ones who helped me with my problems :p )

And im back again with another problem lol I recently got 2G of ram (on top of my 1G bringing me up to 3G) off my parents. Now i put it in my machine and yes windows is reading it as 3geg but something is bothering me. My motherboard can support 4 ram sticks, and can use dual channel. Its not the fact that whatever i do i cant get the bios to read these as dual channel thats bothering me (cause i read it doesnt make much diference at all), tried all the ways it said, but its the fact that the bios says on boot something like this

DDR 200 , single channel , 64bit
:mad:

DDR200?! lol all the sticks are pc3200 DDR 400. (the 2 new ones can go at 400mhz said on site) but i think the old ones can only go at 200mhz as thats the speed its always said it goes at (thts what everest said anyways. But it says that about these and these i know go at 400mhz). but now it says all the sticks are at 200mhz. I used a program called PX Wizard 2006 to make a report on the ram. it also says my mobo make an stats etc.. its attached to this message. I'm not to much an expert on ram so i Hope someone knows whats amiss here, cheers, and have a merry xmas :grinthumb
 
hmm what about the low speed thoughj. there ment to be going at 400mhz, but theres at 200. im pretty sure one of the other sticks is ment to be at 400mhz as well. I might (probably am) wrong but could one of the sticks maybye slow the others down? i have one that, as you can see, is slightly slower than the other 3. But again i thought that if it was DDR400 that ment it ran at 400mhz, and 200 ment 200mhz...is that right?

cheers m8
 
Hello James.

200mhz=400mhz effective.

DDR400(pc3200) runs on a fsb of 200mhz.

DDR333(pc2700) runs on a fsb of 166mhz.

DDR266(pc2100) runs on a fsb of 133mhz.

As vegasgmc says, your absolutely fine.

Merry christmas to you.

Regards Howard :)
 
The RAM's speed is 200MHZ per stick. When you install two 200MHZ sticks in a dual channel mobo the memory controller addresses them in a new way. It kind of runs like this: As one stick is being read from the other is being written too simultaneously, then they shift etc. etc. In effect you get 400MHZ effective from two 200MHZ sticks of RAM. Another way to look at it is that the memory is addressed on both the upward slope and downward slope of the clock/voltage so you get two cycles to the RAM for each CPU clock cycle.

The above is not a real technical way to look at it but it does illustrate the theory of operation behind DDR, and is easy to understand, so please no flaming! LOL. You can go to the Corsair site or Crucial site and there are more technical discussions re. DDR but the above is the jist of it. If you had just one stick installed the RAM would read at 200MHZ

In your setup you should match the sticks of RAM to each other or you won't get DDR. In other words the two 1024MB sticks in channel A and the two 512MB sticks in channelB.
 
aa right. cheers guys, i know how it works now :p but im starting to get anotehr problem which im sure relates to one of my sticks of ram. Thought id use this thread but if i dont get any luck guess ill make a fresh one

Lately ive actaully noticed some strange action within windows. Seems a bit laggy at times.(and sometimes when games are loading, itll get to the end and stick for a minute) Nothing worth worrying about but one thing in particular is getting worse. My windows media player. One i start a song, of course the window pops up, the vizualisation is flying away.But after a few seconds its freezes (just wmp), for like 3 seconds, then resumes as normal. And often when i close a song, or double click anotehr while its still playing, the songs goes really weird. Its very hard 2 explain, imagine a cassete getting caught. For example itll go like this
the | is when ive selected a new song

"im singing a song, im singin a song , im singin a soo|onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn..." *next song comes on*

again its as if its lagging.lately its been happening more often. And the amount of times windows media player has crashed lately is unreal (especially when i put it in the taskbar and try to pull it back out. or even when i try to skip through a movie)

i decided to check out the ram as it seems to have been happining more since i updated it. Ive also been trying to get it on dual channel lately but its a no go ,so i thought id kill 2 birds with one stone :p . And i think i found out why. These are the timeings for the sticks (i always thought they were teh same but i was wrong it seems)

DIMM1 1024mb - @200mhz 3.0-3-3-8
DIMM2 1024 mb - @200mhz 3.0-3-3-8
DIMM3 512mb - @200mhz 2.5-4-4-8
DIMM4 512mb(has 3 this one)- @200mhz 3.0-3-3-8
2.5-3-3-7
2.0-2-2-6


this is all according to everest. As you can see DIMM3 is different from the rest. So i guess my main question is could this be slowing the others down? and cause this strange problem i have. Cause if it is ill just replace it, just wanted 2 check first lol
 
Right gonna change this question round a bit, cause i wanna try something but want a little advice be4 i do.

As you can see the timings of one of the sticks (the oldest) says it can ONLY go at 2.5, and the rest at 3.0 . I've been trying to understand this lately an this is what ive came up with.

The DRAM option in the bios im sure is set to Auto . Now i wanna know , keeping the fact dual channel wont function in mind. Are 3 of the slots running at 3.0 , and this one slot at 2.5? Or would it put them all to 2.5? As i said i set it to auto so i dont know how its configured it :(

Because i was thinking of setting it myself to 2.5 as they would all run at that, an might get a bit more speed. Also Dual channel would engage its glory :)

But im a bit scared to because i remember tampering with it before, and im SURE i set it to 2.0 and the screen wouldnt come on. And i got the memory beep as well. (This is how i found out though that the two 2gb sticks run in dual channel ok, cause i had to use just those to fix the problem)

I might be wrong but i like learning bout these things so i hope someone can enlighten me :D

Cheers

(Spec in Sig)
 
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