Memory on board isnt reading right ?

[Wee_Mee]

Hi i come here hoping to find out what my problem is i hope you can help me.

I have a 848P motherboard from GigaByte P4 titan series and i have 2 x 512 meg sticks of ram in it , i not great with computers but i think its DDR 2700 thats what it says on lable any how but this is the problem is its only reading as 786 megs of ram when if my math is right it should be 1024 ? i am confused to why this is any ideas ?

o i know you might all say its a bios setting of some sort i have looked in bios and read manaul but it only has settings to over clock the memory not to change its settings and i dont see any jumpers on board too : :hotouch:

 

[osram]

so both sticks are the exactly same type? does your mobo support dual-channel ram?

have you placed the RAM in slots 1 and 2? (usually start counting from the cpu..)

 

[Wee_Mee]

well yes it does surport duel channel ram and there is 3 slors max of 4 gig of ram ddr 400+ can be fitted in total and i have tryed the ram in all slots ie , 1&2 , 2&3 , and 1&3 no change does any one know if a ram stick can be half broken could this be reason it only showing 256 in stead of 512 ?

 

[osram]

then try using one of the rams only in slot one.. if it works use the other one in slot 1 to see if that one might be the problem..

to verify you can use memtest 86 or windows memory diagnostic tool.

but with 2 ramsticks you can at least switch/only use one of them.. so finding the problem should be "easy".

 

[Wee_Mee]

well i done what you said and 1 seems faulty it only reading as 256 megs and its a 512 stick i never heard of ram half breaking before this is new to me .O well i was gonna up grade to DDR 400 at some point might as well be now.

By the what ram would you all say would be best to get and how much i was looking at
1. getting 2 gigs of 333
2. 1 gig of 400
What would give me the better scope to play games on ?

 

[Tedster]

what kind of motherboard and CPU do you have?
You always want the fastest ram your motherboard and CPU can handle.

 

[Wee_Mee]

my mother board is P4 titan series 848P it says it can use DDR 400+ ? what ever that meens haha :angel:
this is discription of board
Supports 800MHz FSB Intel Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology
Leveraging the Intel 848P chipset to support 3GHz+ P4 CPUs on 800MHz FSB, Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and advanced features, the GA-8I848P-G delivers a full-value, highest performance solution for today's most demanding tasks.
Supports DDR 400/333/266 up to 2GB Memory
Available with 3 DIMM slots supporting up to 2GB of DDR400/333/266 memory, GA-8I848P-G provides the highest performance platform with the high-bandwidth (3.2GB/s) mainstream DDR memory solution.
AGP 8X Graphics Interface
AGP8X the new generation VGA interface specification that enables enhanced graphics performance with high bandwidth speeds up to 2.12GB/s. With a bus of 533MHz, AGP8X is twice as fast as AGP4X.
Marvell Gigabit LAN
Marvell, the industry leader in innovation of highest performance broadband communications technologies offers Gigabit LAN for an astounding network throughput of 1000 Mb/s! With high-speed data transfer along with superior quality and reliability, Marvell is the best and most efficient option for fast growing small office and home networks.
Serial ATA Interface
Serial ATA is the next generation ATA specification that provides scalable performance for today and tomorrow. With up to 150MB/s data transfer rate, Serial ATA is faster than current Parallel ATA, while providing 100% software compatibility.
High quality 8-channel audio with UAJ function
Featuring incredible sound quality especially with its S/PDIF-IN/OUT function that enables users to experience high quality audio for multimedia entertainment. With new Universal Audio Jack (UAJ) feature users won't have the worries about how to install speakers correctly.
:dead:

 

[Tedster]

then use DDR 400 PC3200 memory and only the brands recommended in the manual.

 

[osram]

well my mobo supports 400mhz ram too.. im on AMD though. i have 2x 512 mb PC3200 running now in dual channel mode.

what i can tell you for sure is that 2x 512mb on dual channel runs faster than 1x 1GB of ram on 1 slot.. because the memory gets accesses parallel with dual channel..

but you are talking about 333 and 400.. in your case id get the fastest ram using dual channel rather than 1 slot.

good luck.

 

[Tedster]

always run DDR memory in matched pairs when possible....

2 x 256mb

2 x 512mb

2 x 1gb

I have 3 x 512mb in my system

 

[peterdiva]

Is one stick single sided(chips on one side only)and the other double sided(chips on both sides).If that's the case put the single sided one in slot 1 and the double sided one in slot 2.Also,the board only supports memory sticks with a maximum of 16 chips.

 

[Wee_Mee]

the thing is i cant offord much atm since it x-mas pressies and all that is it better or more cost effective to have the 333 but like 2 gigs of it or 1 gig of the 400 ?

 

[Tedster]

get two gigs of 512 DDR 400. The cost isn't much higher than 333 just a few $

 

[Wee_Mee]

i hace only 3 dim slots so if i use 512 i can only max 1576 but could i do 2 x 512 1 x 1024 strip ?

 

[desipio]

ram problem

disable in your bios the video ram share option its probably set to 128, i had the problem a while ago :bounce:

 

[Arcanum]

desipio, that's what I was thinking but the mobo is reporting 768MB, thats 256MB less than 1024MB, I don't know if integrated cards can share more memory than 128MB - but it wouldnt hurt to check it out in the BIOS...

wee mee, try checking the BIOS for i integrated VGA shared memory or something similar.

You could try to go for the 2x512MB + 1x1GB DDR 400, but at least be sure that the sticks are of the same brand - but then you wont be able to run in dual channel.
The ideal case would be if you could get 2x1GB DDR 400, that would be 2GB + it would be in dual channel - the fastest variant, but you said you're on a tight budget...
Then again you could just go for 2x512MB DDR 400 so it would be in dual channel...

If you wont be upgrading your computer in a while or wont be buying a new computer for a long time - go for the 2GB, if you will be buying a new computer relatively soon get the 1GB (2x512MB ddr 400) variant.

 

[Mtyson8]

I cant understand why it supports dual channel if it has 3 slots????? Never heard of dual channel with 3 slots. Can Anyone explain?

ALSO WEE Wee, GET PC3200 if it supports it. I benchmarked my pc with 1280MB @333MHz and 1280MB @400MHz and I got alot better score and framerates with 400mhz. Also, Im selling 2 PC3200 Kingston HyperX 512s for a total of 1gig if your interested for $100. Brand New. Pretty blue heatsinks on each.

 

[Arcanum]

Doesnt dual channel require only two slots to work (or four)?
So why couldnt you have 3 slots on a dual channel capable mobo - if you're using slots 1 & 3 its dual channel, otherwise it would be single channel?
(although I dont specifically remember any dual channel capable mobo with 3 memory slots)
I always thought of it that way, please correct me if thats not true.

BTW, disregard the dual channel I mentioned above Wee Mee, the 848P chipset apparently does NOT SUPPORT dual channel, so your best bet is to get 2x512MB + 1x1GB DDR400 since you cannot run in dual channel.