mwarner Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Hi all, I am currently in the process of speccing up a machine for our company that has 4GB of memory. The machine will be using Windows XP 64-bit Edition and so I was hoping for a Socket 939 Athlon 64 solution. The reason it has to have such a large quantity of memory is because we are to port our database application to 64-bit Windows (due next month) and run a huge database on it. My question is - what modern S939 motherboard has been thoroughly verfied to correctly operate with 4GB of memory, and what memory was paired with it? In terms of chipsets I would prefer nForce4, but it would appear from reading around that there are issues with running 4GB - at least with the Asus A8N SLI. My second choice would, therefore, be the K8T800 Pro. In terms of memory I can get Corsair 2GB XMS3200PT TwinX fairly easily, and can buy Crucial and Kingston 1GB modules too. However, few prople seem to mention anything above 2GB - which is fine for most users, but not for me! From reading through these forums I have seen that the A8V Deluxe seems to work ok with twinx2048-3200 (is this essentially the same as the XMS3200PT above?): http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34108&highlight=4GB+Asus And that the A8N SLI doesn;t seem to cooperate very well: http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34084&highlight=4GB+Asus I would love to hear from anyone who has managed to get 4GB (3.5GB, of course, as the missing 0.5GB of memory addresses are reserved for PCI I/O space, AGP aperture mapping space and other onboard device I/O space) working on a modern Socket 939 board! Or, alternatively, hear from a Corsair representative confirming that a certain combination will work correctly. Thanks! Mike http://www.mikeshardware.co.uk/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted March 18, 2005 Corsair Employees Share Posted March 18, 2005 Mike, Thanks for posting your questions, but there are few of these questions I cannot touch. First I cannot suggest one MB maker over another as it really causes a conflict of interest for me. Not to mention we try our best to work well with all MB makers. Sorry and hope you understand. And since we do not offer a 4 module set of modules we do not really validate any desktop MB with max memory, there is just not that much of a demand. However we have tested most of the major MB's with out problems un-officially. And the fact that we officially would only suggest one set of Twinx max with about any MB. In addition, and more important would be the spec for AMD 64 CPU’s will only run a Max of 6 ranks at DDR400 and since all of our 512MB XMS modules and above are dual ranked/bank you would only be able to run at DDR400 with 2 modules. In other words, 6 ranks max for PC3200 (3 per channel), 8 ranks and over automatically kicks back to PC2700. In every instance I’m aware of you’ll have to manually set the frequency to 200MHz manually if you want to try to run 8 ranks at PC3200 (increasing VCORE can help also) but we cannot guarantee that the platform will be stable. I think you have the right idea about the type and makes of MB's to consider and the modules I would suggest if you had asked me with out specifying would be Twinx2048-3200. Or even 2 VS2GBKit400 set would run great in this case. With our XMS modules having a slight performance advantage! And the links you gave to put them in perspective, the user in question has a PSU that is not ATX 2.0 Compliant and that MB he has would need that. In addition, the SLI based MB's have only just been released and as the bios matures I am sure memory management will improve. But I am sure as more MB get to market, more users will try and max the memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwarner Posted March 19, 2005 Author Share Posted March 19, 2005 Thanks for your reply. I understand you cannot comment on specific motherboards, but your answer was of help to me - and probably others too. It is rare to see any useful comments on using 4GB of memory with a modern motherboard ANYWHERE on the internet! We already have a machine with an Asus A8V Deluxe & 2GB of TwinX, so I might order an identical pair for test purposes before going the whole hog and ordering the complete system. Thanks again, Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted March 22, 2005 Corsair Employees Share Posted March 22, 2005 No problem, and please let me know if you have any questions! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwarner Posted March 30, 2005 Author Share Posted March 30, 2005 An update on the above: I have just finished building my 4GB Athlon 64 system, and am currently running memtest86+ on it to ensure the memory is all ok. It ran without any errors for an hour at DDR333 (the default clock speed when all four banks used) and I have just started testing it at DDR400 (I had to manually configure this in the BIOS). So far so good - there are no problems. I will update this thread if any problems occur with this setup. If you are looking to build an Athlon 64 system with 4GB of memory, you may be interested in what I ended up choosing: Antec Sonata 380W case Asus A8V Deluxe (BIOS 1008) Athlon 64 4000+ (S939, 2.4Ghz Clawhammer) 2 x sets of TwinX 2048 3200PRO DDR400 (4x1GB) 2 x Western Digital Raptor WD74GD (RAID 0) XFX GeForce MX4000 64Mb There are other bits and pieces too, but this is the essence of the machine. If I get the opportunity I may try the memory in an Asus A8N SLI Deluxe and see how it fares. This was my intended motherboard from the start, but I was unable to verify the board worked with 4GB of memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leeghoofd Posted March 30, 2005 Share Posted March 30, 2005 Great stuff mate glad you got it working even at DDR400 speeds. GL with your 3d craftmanship or whatever you use that ram for ;): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwarner Posted March 30, 2005 Author Share Posted March 30, 2005 One last update: The memory testing all went ok for both DDR333 and DDR400 at default voltages and timings, each completing a single loop of memtest86+ tests which took about an hour and a half per test. It should be noted that memtest86+ cannot test above 3GB for technical reasons, but as 3GB of the 4GB available passed ok (missing half a GB on each of the two black slots - being able to see this is one advantage of using Corsair's PRO memory I guess!) I was happy enough. I have since installed Windows XP x64 Edition RC2 onto the machine and, whilst I came across an issue with VIA's SATA drivers, everything is now sorted out and working just fine - the two Raptor's are running in RAID 0, all 4GB of memory is available in the task manager and the machine is perfectly stable. The SATA driver issue should not be a problem with the release version of WinXP 64-bit as it will have built-in support for VIA SATA drivers. However, if you are interested in installing the Release Candidate you will need to modify the VIAMRAID.INF file in the Hyperion Pro 64 driverset to 'decorate' the inf file. The is explained on Microsoft's web site and is pretty easy to do: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/install/64INF_reqs.mspx#top Basically it just involves changing: [Manufacturer] %VIA%=VIA [VIA] %PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249.DeviceDesc% = viamraid , PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249 to: [Manufacturer] %VIA%=VIA,NTamd64 [VIA.NTAMD64] %PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249.DeviceDesc% = viamraid , PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249 ... and then installing the driver through F6 at startup. If you don't make this change it results in blue screens of death - i.e. the machine boots to a certain point, performs a BSOD, reboots etc etc. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted March 30, 2005 Corsair Employees Share Posted March 30, 2005 Mike, Thank you so much for taking the time to post this, as I think it will be helpful to many others with this MB. Great Info! :cool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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