Dual channel ??? 2x512 vs 4 x512

[kamerra]

Hi
i think i am loosing my mind. when i ran my machine at 1 gig ( 2x512 ) , at the start it told me 1 gig 400 mhz dual channel. when i added another 1 gig ( 2x 512 ) , same timing in both cases ( 2-3-2-5) at the start it says 2 gig 333 mhz dual channel ....
why does 2 gig make a difference, i was expecting it to run at 400mhz ?, and can i change the bios settings to 400 mhz or could this be to risky ?
k


specs :
~ AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor (Venice)
~ Plextor PX-740A 16X Internal Dual Layer DVD±R/RW CD-R/RW Drive
~ MSI NX7800GT-VT2D256E Geforce 7800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3
~ Asus A8N-SLI nForce4 SLI Motherboard
~ 250 GB Maxtor SATA Hard drive
~ Thermaltake Silent PurePower 480W Power supply
~ 2 GB PC 3200 DDR400+ RAM (4x512MB)( PATRIOT )
~ Windows XP Pro ( 32)

 

[DonNagual]

It is the AMD memory controller on the CPU most likely. Do you know what revision your CPU is? If it is rev E6 or later, then a simple bios update should fix you up. If it is pre revE6, you can try a bios update anyways just to see if it doesn't bump you back up to 400Mhz. It's worth a shot.

Good luck!

 

[Didou]

If you had taken the time to read the manual, you would know that an Athlon64 will clock down the memory to 333MHz if all 4 slots are populated unless all 4 memory modules are single-sided (which most likely in this case they are not).

You can always try to change the memory speed in the BIOS back to 400MHz, but chances are that it'll be back down to 333MHz once you reboot.

 

[kamerra]

thanks for the pointers.
i changed in bios to 400mhz , did restart and settings were preserved.. will run some tests to see if anything is suspicious....

k