With new sticks of RAM, WoW crashes still

[M4gum99]

yeah here's the mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130491

yes i think it's the 184pin, and yeah i know the analogy, you "spread" the power out with the 512 sticks. I neeed the 2 gigs though for my new BF2142, i CANNOT play now with 1 gig without redic lag.

and yes wow is like crack, but I also play like FEAR, BF2, Bf2142, Oblivion, Doom 3, etc. I'm looking at spore, dreaming I could play Crysis... lol.

but yeah I think teh ram is 184pin Grr. what's that do for you anyway??

 

[DonNagual]

Okay... scratch mostly everything about the power supply. I was just reading some of the 400+ user reviews on my mobo.. and to my disgust, i read over 10 + reviews saying 4 sticks of dual channel will not work in the mobo, AND that it limits my ram from 400 to 333 ( for some reason, probably my own fault by budgeting.). Is there any solution t o this p roblem?

First we should try and find out if it is your motherboard or the CPU memory controller that is automatically underclocking your ram. Actually, have you already confirmed that it is at 333Mhz?

This is a well known situation with the Athlon64 cpus. The memory controller is built into the CPU (unlike intel) and the earlier models had a hard time with 4 sticks.

The newer revisions of the Athlon64 cpus (I think rev 6?) actually claim to have corrected the problem, but there are also a lot of motherboards that will automatically underclock the ram as well once a 4th stick is added.

Do you know your CPU model number? I know it is the 3200+, but do you have the box it came in? If not, you can run CPU-z to find what revision it is.

My motherboard also automatically underclocked my ram to 333Mhz when I added the 4th stick. What I did was overclocked my CPU and brought my ram back up to 400Mhz. This also may be possible with you if you are willing to venture into the world of evil overclocking. It will also depend on how well your board takes to the whole affair...

Side note, did you try simply going into your bios and manually setting your ram to 400Mhz? That also works for some people.

 

[M4gum99]

yeah, I have the box in front of me... I'll just type it all out for you:


NVIDIA nForce4 Standard Chipset Based
K8N Neo4-F
Design for Socket939 AMD Athalon 64/FX/X2 Processors

1. No I didn't think it'd be that redundant to just go into the BIOS to clock the ram at 400, but I will try that after this post. But go to my newegg link for the mobo, and click read all reviews... a lot people said the board just doesn't take 4 Dual Channel RAM pairs, it just doesn't work for them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813130491

 

[M4gum99]

ok i think i just figured it out, but i want you guys to check this out.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo4-F&class=mb

that's the page from my Mobo's site that gives you the RAM combinations... and when I had bought this, it says, there's 3 combos for Dual channel ram. i thought i could have 4 single sided memory chips up to 1gig in size iin all 4 slots, which makes sense. but I took it to this dinky little comp repair shop down the block with this printout, and somehow this woman interpreted it as i can only have the 1gb dual channel ram sticks in the third and fourth DIMM slots. How she derived this is beyond me, but when she looked at it she seemed dead positive that that's how I'd have to do it.

here's the ram i also want to buy, if this is the case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820134039

 

[DonNagual]

Can you please clarify something for me?

Do you have the 4 sticks now? Assuming you do, and they are installed, please run CPUz and check both the "memory" tab and the "spd" tab and post those specs in this thread. You can get CPUz here.

As for the other reviews of people saying that they can't run 4 sticks of ram on their boards, I would assume that it is because they are using ram that is not compatible with the board. If they are claiming that they can not get their ram up to 400Mhz with 4 sticks, that is likely not the boards fault. Athlon64 cpus have the memory controller integrated into the cpu. It can not handle 4 sticks of double sided DDR ram well. It automatically underclocks the ram to 333Mhz (and also a 2T command by the way). This happens with almost all Athlon64 cpus on all motherboards.

As for the clerk at the store you went to, I don't know how she came to that conclusion. According to the maker's site there are a few different ram configurations that will support dual channel mode. The combination she mentioned is one of the possible combinations, but not the only one according to the board's site.

Again, can you update me on what you currently have running (how many sticks are installed, what frequency they are running at and whether or not they are being recognized as dual channel) using CPUz. Thanks.

 

[M4gum99]

WOW.... i did that cpuz. i have the 2 sticks installed...

recognized as dual channel, 201 MHZ!!! wtf!
then under spd for both sticks it's identical, it says PC3200 (200MHZ) for max bandwith.

 

[raybay]

The OCZ is just another Chinese or Korean power supply (depending on the day) with a very high price tag. OCZ is basically a marketing company based in Canada, and they do make some memory there. But they are really a consortium of five Shanghai and Chinese companies with OCZ put together to market. We are beginning to see a lot fo their failed power supplies in the shop. You will do just as well with Antec, Coolermaster, Zalman, FSP, and several other with no need to pay $150 for a $50 power supply, when an Antec for $65 is capable of the same output.

 

[DonNagual]

WOW.... i did that cpuz. i have the 2 sticks installed...

recognized as dual channel, 201 MHZ!!! wtf!
then under spd for both sticks it's identical, it says PC3200 (200MHZ) for max bandwith.

This is correct and nothing to worry about. Your ram is 200Mhz, but it is DDR ram which stands for double data rate. It has an effective speed of 400Mhz but CPUz shows the actual speed not effective speed.

So when you have two sticks in, your board is correctly running them at 200Mhz frequency. What does it say in CPUz when you stick in all four?

 

[M4gum99]

my kingston hyperX ram just arrived yesterday. I slapped those 1gb dual channel sticks in, everything works no problem. it probably won't be *as* fast as the 4 512 sticks, but it eliminated all my problems that I had before. one thing though, I only have 2 days to return stuff if I wanted to... I bought a 60$ AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz Socket 939 Processor... and I'm seeing no speed differences during gaming compared to my old Pentium 4 2.8ghz processor on my old rig. could anyone recomend a processor that'd be significantly better than that on newegg that isn't going to cost me like 300$?

 

[raybay]

The enemy of good is "better", and no matter where you go, there you are. Wait until the new Duo-Core Processors come and and go through their testing... then the AMD response to the Duo Core.
The Intel and AMD people are lying in wait with new stuff for the new Vista. The world of computer will change dramatically in the next six months. I would wait until May or October to make any big changes in equipment.
The coming hardware and software technology will be as dramatic, and as important, as those that came in 1994 or 1999 or 2001.

 

[M4gum99]

yeah but i have 2 days to send my processor back to newegg otherwise i blew 70$ for a processor i only used for like a couple weeks.

 

[raybay]

I would stop trying to play WoW. There are too many other good games.
Send it back to Newegg, and I will buy it at a slight discount.

 

[Sharkfood]

That's a socket 939 motherboard so you have many upgrade options. What was your old CPU now that we know your new one is a 3200+?

I've always recommended the 3400+ as minimum for Socket 939 configurations. Realize you have a huge, huge ceiling to upgrade (even up to FX series dual-core AMD's) so you still have lots of room to grow if you want more CPU power down the road.

So whether or not you return your 3200+ will depend on what your old CPU is. WoW isn't the best test of CPU power but alternatively, I'd run SiSoft Sandra's cpu arith tests. Integer, floating point performance is what most modern games demand once they are no longer graphics bound. But if your 3d card is on the weak side, you'll never realize the full potential of your cpu.