Want to add more ram

[emax1ram]

Hello, I was on here a few weeks ago wth ram issues. I had 2GB installed and only 1GB was showing. That is fixed now, I have 2GB ram showing and the system is stable. By the way, let me post this fix. In Vista, click on start, then in the search type "msconfig" when that comes up, look for the boot tab, click it, then find the advanced tab, should be down and to the left. When that window opens you will see a section at the top right says: "Maximum memory" and it might be checked, limiting the system memory to 1GB. If it is, Uncheck it and restart, then you will have your 2GB of ram, (as long as nothing else is wrong). Unbelievable ! !

 

Ok, now for my current issue. I want to add another 2GB to my system, here are my specs, can I do it? Someone told me I won't get any performance gain with Vista 32bit? Is this true. In case you don't see my specs;

 

Asus P5N-E SLI, Intel 2.66MHZ Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB Corsair DDR2 twin 2x1024-6400C4, (I want to add the exact ram sticks to my MB). The MB has two more slots available the "black" slots, and supposedly it can handle the extra ram, but will I see a benefit?

 

Thanks in advance.

[bigbuck08]

Yes you can do t, but you most likely will not be able to run the memory at 800MHz, the standard for PC6400. Here is something DerekT posted that will help you understand.

 

"If you had purchased 4 X 1024MB of PC6400 (800Mhz) DRAM, then you would have had to drop to P5300 (667MHz) DRAM, etc. 2 X 2048 will not issue this problem. This is a problem of all 4 banks being populated.

 

Think of it this way. If you have a small phone book, then when you go into the index to find the page where you will find the phone number you are doing so at a certain speed due to the pages of the Index. Then you have to drive through the pages to get to the number. Now if your index is twice as large and the pages twice as many, then it takes longer to access the data. Now DRAM has a Strobe and the length of the strobe is how long the rows and columns can be left open before they must be refreshed. There is not enough time for the dram to be refreshed and then accessed with 4GB at the full access speed of the DRAM. The chipsets are optimized for 2GB, not 4GB and for 2 DRAM slots, not 4 DRAM slots populated. You can overclock the FSB (and hence the Memory Controller Hub = MCH) to gain some extra bandwidth and thus access the capabilities of the DRAM since the chipset is now clocked up. Usually when you clock up the FSB and concurrently the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) you need to raise the voltages of the CPU/MCH a bit as well.

 

All you have to do is look at the pages of people who have had this issue on this site, on other DRAM and motherboard sites and Google "4 Dram Banks Populated Errors" to see this issue."

[RAM GUY]

I would agree, unless you plan on using a 64-Bit O.S. I would stay with 2 Gig.

[emax1ram]

Thanks so much for the advice, it makes sense. I don't plan to swith to 64bit Vista anytime soon. I will stay with 2gb for now.

 

Thanks very much for the help.

 

This is a very good forum to deal with these issues.

 

Thanks again.

 

emax

[RAM GUY]

NP And thanks for the compliment, please let me know if you have any more questions!