Adding Ram,should be easy right? Any help here? Please read.

[Mitzlplik_SP]

OK first off here is my info on system and specs:
Win XP Pro SP3 (32 bit)
MSI K9A2 Platinum (MS-7376 ver:1.0)
AMD 2.3g Phenom
2 gigs Kingston PC2-6400 800 mgz DDR2
Nvidia 9800GT GPU
320g Seagate HD
650 watt Ultra PS

Has no onboard video.

OK,here is the trouble. I just bought this PC within the last couple weeks. It came with 2 gigs of RAM. This mobo will max at 8 gigs for 32 bit but I`m only intrested in 4 gigs. So I bought 2 more sticks of ram to match exactly what is in it already and it does. Should be as simple as powering down/unplug and install right?Normally yes....but this is what happens when i do it in this rig.....

Right out of the box it has 4 slots for ram. 1,2,3,4..... factory installed ram is in 1 and 3 and works fine. I get the new ram tonight (identical) and plug it into slots 2 & 4. After filling the 4 slots,I plug it back in and power it up........................... NOTHING. While all the fans kick on and the PC IS running,the light on the monitor which is supposed to be green is still yellow. There are NO beeps while I boot up and no obvious red flags except for no monitor and no keyboard lights and whatnot.

I turn everything off/unplug and pull out 2 and 4 and boom,it refires and says this:
Previous performance of overclocking has failed.The system is restored to default setup,press any key except delete to enter setup....."I hit the anykey" than it counted the ram at 2048 and showed this message:
DQS training failed on previous boot,reverted to slower DRAM speed. Press F1 to resume.

OK,so all is well,the PC is back up and running but it will not let me install this new ram. I`ve even tried taking the ram out of 1,3 and putting that same ram into 1,2 and it will not start. The only way this thing will fire up is with ram in the 1,3 slots.

I`ve found nothing on this subject on my mobo makers website and am currently googling it hoping to figure this out.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated,thanks.

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

I`ll add some things I`ve done/found out,maybe it`ll spark a memory or something in someone.

I just got done updating my bios to the current version and didn`t make any difference. I have discovered that this is mainly an AMD problem through googling. I have found hundreds of pages referring to the same problem but not a one of them with an answer .

I have 4 slots,2 green and 2 orange. Green,Orange,Green,Orange.

This will only run with ram in the green slots. I`ve even tried taking out the 2 gigs (that work in the green slots) and putting those same stix into the orange slots and I get no boot up.

All my memory matches and all the memory works in the green slots,I`ve tested all 4 sticks and they all work but only in green.

Soooo,I`ve wasted enough of my leather gathering time for tonight,hehe. At least this damn thing fires up and runs well, could be worse.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

ya missed it ... he did update the BIOS.

To the OP: To tell you the truth, I've not ever had that happen to me and I've used AMD chips for years. Sounds almost to me that the 2nd bank of slots - 2 & 4 I think you said - might be bad, so putting anything in them would in essence dump the system.

Take it to a pro and have them check - especially if you have 2 sticks of ram identical to the currently installed ones.

 

[Skylark SP]

I just bought this PC within the last couple weeks.

Where did you purchase the system from? If it is only 2 weeks old, you should have some sort of warranty/tech support to contact. You don't want to do anything that will void the warranty. I'd check with them first before I tried anything.

-Skylark

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

Hello,thanks for the replies.

I was up till 4 am last night reading all about the K9A2 Platinum mobo`s and have found a few things out. It seems like this board has known memory problems revolving around dual channel. ATM it seems like I`m only able to go into single channel,the green slots. In my mobo manual it states that to enable dual channel all I need to do is move the ram from the 3rd bank(other green) over to the first orange,so the first 2 slots are filled,one green one orange. That is dual channel. Mine will not start like that. I`ve tried everything except ram timmings in CMOS. Those have been mentioned alot but I am not ready to try that yet.

I`m sure its not a defective board since so many have had the same problem. At this point its looking like it may be a power supply issue. Every thread I`ve read about this has asked the poster about his PSU and %90 of the time it corrected or at least helped the situation.

I have a 650 watt PSU but their saying for this mobo/proc I shouldn`t have anything less than a 12v 45a (on the single rail? I think thats what they said)....still learnin as I go,hehe. As far as I can tell,mine is a 12v 38a Ultra.

Just an FYI for those maybe building/buying a new pc. Be wary of the MSI K9A2 boards,definately known issues with memory and posting. I wasn`t supposed to end up with this board in the first place. The company I bought this barbones kit from advertised an ASUS M3A mobo. I was kind of suprised when I got this instead. I didn`t call and pancake cause I got some ram and a vid card that wasn`t supposed to come with it.

On the bright side,it runs great the way it is.I`m thinking it`ll run fine if I get 2/2gig stix instead of the 4 one giggers. I`m only after 4 gigs anyway. I`ll add anything I can to this thread (everyone else is welcomed to as well,all info is welcome ) as I find it out. Never know who may stumble across this problem in the future.

Thanks for any interest

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Interesting info on the MSI boards. I used to use them back in the 486 days - great performers, but it sounds almost like the ability to handle some things are a bit lacking!

If this is your issue, by all means see if you can return the 2 new 1GB sticks and perhaps "trade up" to 2 2GB sticks. You know, you-to-retailer: "I just bought the but my system has a problem that doesn't allow them to work right. Rather than return and get an outright refund, could I return them and perhaps get 4 GB in 2 2GB sticks then pay you the difference?"

As for the PSU, I don't think a 650w PSU is the problem. Usually amperage and voltage to the mainboard are correct for virtually anything. The board itself has voltage and amperage regulators builtin I believe.

 

[RawHeadRex]

Interesting info on the MSI boards. I used to use them back in the 486 days - great performers, but it sounds almost like the ability to handle some things are a bit lacking!

If this is your issue, by all means see if you can return the 2 new 1GB sticks and perhaps "trade up" to 2 2GB sticks. You know, you-to-retailer: "I just bought the but my system has a problem that doesn't allow them to work right. Rather than return and get an outright refund, could I return them and perhaps get 4 GB in 2 2GB sticks then pay you the difference?"

As for the PSU, I don't think a 650w PSU is the problem. Usually amperage and voltage to the mainboard are correct for virtually anything. The board itself has voltage and amperage regulators builtin I believe.

yes but no no no this is a known issue on nf4 boards, especially for the msi plat for some reason. for some reason if you go dual channel my filling 1 and 3 OR 2 and 4 OR all slots ... this is known to happen. the only question i have is , the ram timings of the two different types of memory may be causing the issue. the only thing i can think of is going into bios, setting memory to manual and setting all ram to the slowest speed of both types. if 1 and 3 slot are 5-5-5-15 and slots 2 and 4 are 6-6-6-17 ... set all to 6-6-6-17. this was just used as an example. usually mobos will do this automatically when set to 'auto' memory speeds.

good point about voltages , make sure both sets of ram are running at the correct voltage. i've seen some only need 1.6 and then ive seen some that REQUIRE 1.8+. before forcing both to run at a higher voltage, make sure the weaker pair can handle the bump in voltage. what are all four running at in bios now ?

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Good point on RAM voltage, however I believe the OP stated he'd gone so far as to get an identical pair of the same sticks he already had. So I dodged that little point. The fact a certain model line of MSI boards have issues like this really surprised me as I always thought of them as rather stable products all around.

Then again I shouldn't be too surprised as a new Asus mobo I had refused to work with a deskjet 5550 inkjet printer - even with a Rosewill parallel port AND trying via USB hookup as well. So my kid got that mobo and I got a Gigabyte one that works great!

My board is setup as 1-3/2-4 for dual channel operation and I run 2 2GB sticks of 800 DDR2 altho I could run as high as 1033. Four gigs on a 32-bit XP OS is fine enough as the video card (Nvidia 8400GS PCI Express x16) is the true workhorse in UO and Warhammer.

 

[RawHeadRex]

Good point on RAM voltage, however I believe the OP stated he'd gone so far as to get an identical pair of the same sticks he already had. So I dodged that little point. The fact a certain model line of MSI boards have issues like this really surprised me as I always thought of them as rather stable products all around.

Then again I shouldn't be too surprised as a new Asus mobo I had refused to work with a deskjet 5550 inkjet printer - even with a Rosewill parallel port AND trying via USB hookup as well. So my kid got that mobo and I got a Gigabyte one that works great!

My board is setup as 1-3/2-4 for dual channel operation and I run 2 2GB sticks of 800 DDR2 altho I could run as high as 1033. Four gigs on a 32-bit XP OS is fine enough as the video card (Nvidia 8400GS PCI Express x16) is the true workhorse in UO and Warhammer.

ahh thank you I did miss that part. hmm well then I would download and run memtest86 on each stick of memory one at a time to make sure each stick is ok.
and although you have 4 gigs installed, 32bit can only address 3.5(windows will see all but use only 3) of that which we are all ok with and know about. having two sticks of 2gb each is a good solution for this problem as i know of no other solution. i never had this problem in my former nf4 evga but i've read countless issues with loading all four slots on many mobos.

your memory may indeed run at 1066 but unless your cpu is running at 1066 as well ... no point imho.

 

[RawHeadRex]

OK first off here is my info on system and specs:
Win XP Pro SP3 (32 bit)
MSI K9A2 Platinum (MS-7376 ver:1.0)
AMD 2.3g Phenom
2 gigs Kingston PC2-6400 800 mgz DDR2
Nvidia 9800GT GPU
320g Seagate HD
650 watt Ultra PS

Has no onboard video.

OK,here is the trouble. I just bought this PC within the last couple weeks. It came with 2 gigs of RAM. This mobo will max at 8 gigs for 32 bit but I`m only intrested in 4 gigs. So I bought 2 more sticks of ram to match exactly what is in it already and it does. Should be as simple as powering down/unplug and install right?Normally yes....but this is what happens when i do it in this rig.....

Right out of the box it has 4 slots for ram. 1,2,3,4..... factory installed ram is in 1 and 3 and works fine. I get the new ram tonight (identical) and plug it into slots 2 & 4. After filling the 4 slots,I plug it back in and power it up........................... NOTHING. While all the fans kick on and the PC IS running,the light on the monitor which is supposed to be green is still yellow. There are NO beeps while I boot up and no obvious red flags except for no monitor and no keyboard lights and whatnot.

I turn everything off/unplug and pull out 2 and 4 and boom,it refires and says this:
Previous performance of overclocking has failed.The system is restored to default setup,press any key except delete to enter setup....."I hit the anykey" than it counted the ram at 2048 and showed this message:
DQS training failed on previous boot,reverted to slower DRAM speed. Press F1 to resume.

OK,so all is well,the PC is back up and running but it will not let me install this new ram. I`ve even tried taking the ram out of 1,3 and putting that same ram into 1,2 and it will not start. The only way this thing will fire up is with ram in the 1,3 slots.

I`ve found nothing on this subject on my mobo makers website and am currently googling it hoping to figure this out.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated,thanks.

32bit systems can only address 3.5, 64bit os's can address the 8 gigs.

the 'failed to overclock' message tells all. it tells me the new ram sticks are in fact not the same and indeed one pair was running faster than the other pair. memory yields can vary widely depending on the BATCH NUMBERS ON THE RAM, not the model number as one might guess. Same model numbers does not automatically mean they will work.

a simple test would be to; write down what bios says about the speed settings regarding the ram you have in there now. the ram in there now is set to auto in bios and is greyed out saying something like 6-6-6-18 give or take.
next, power down,disconnect power cord, wait ten seconds and take anti static precautions, take out ram you know that works, replacing them with the new ram in same slots. if it boots, great go into bios and record what the greyed out memory speeds are with the NEW memory.

if the numbers are IDENTICAL, what im saying does not apply. if the numbers are off, you need to manually slow down all ram in bios to the slowest of the two speeds(highest numbers).
example; if good old memory is 5-7-5- 18 and the new ram is 6-6-6-24 , all needs to run at 6-6-6-24. memory can run slower(underclock), its the running faster(overclock) that gives it problems.

*edit* i did a google on the DQS training failed message and it seems sometimes depending on the memory maker,mobo and cpu ... voltages need to be upped on the northbridge in bios and to relax(slow) the timings of all memory if running at 1066, which you are not. since you are running at 800, no upping of the northbridge(Hypertransport)voltage is required, just make sure all memory is running at same speeds as described above.
http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=569

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

32bit systems can only address 3.5, 64bit os's can address the 8 gigs.

the 'failed to overclock' message tells all. it tells me the new ram sticks are in fact not the same and indeed one pair was running faster than the other pair. memory yields can vary widely depending on the BATCH NUMBERS ON THE RAM, not the model number as one might guess. Same model numbers does not automatically mean they will work.

a simple test would be to; write down what bios says about the speed settings regarding the ram you have in there now. the ram in there now is set to auto in bios and is greyed out saying something like 6-6-6-18 give or take.
next, power down,disconnect power cord, wait ten seconds and take anti static precautions, take out ram you know that works, replacing them with the new ram in same slots. if it boots, great go into bios and record what the greyed out memory speeds are with the NEW memory.

if the numbers are IDENTICAL, what im saying does not apply. if the numbers are off, you need to manually slow down all ram in bios to the slowest of the two speeds(highest numbers).
example; if good old memory is 5-7-5- 18 and the new ram is 6-6-6-24 , all needs to run at 6-6-6-24. memory can run slower(underclock), its the running faster(overclock) that gives it problems.

*edit* i did a google on the DQS training failed message and it seems sometimes depending on the memory maker,mobo and cpu ... voltages need to be upped on the northbridge in bios and to relax(slow) the timings of all memory if running at 1066, which you are not. since you are running at 800, no upping of the northbridge(Hypertransport)voltage is required, just make sure all memory is running at same speeds as described above.
http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=569

Right on,I`ll make sure to try that ram thing in a few hours. I just got home and kind of busy atm. I would dance a jig if that fixed it,lol. I`d love you long time!

I am rootin for your fix over what they suggested at my official main board website. I explained in great detail what I have happening and they only come to one,short conclusion. " Looks like the CPU is damaged or making bad contact. Have you tried reseating the CPU?"
I have tried reseating it and it didn`t fix it. I tried asking more questions but was imediately shot down,like what they said was the gospel.

I can accept a bad cpu,just was hoping for more discussion about things I could try.

So thanks for your advice Rawredrex. I`ll try out what you`ve outlined later tonight and cross my figers it works!

 

[RawHeadRex]

Right on,I`ll make sure to try that ram thing in a few hours. I just got home and kind of busy atm. I would dance a jig if that fixed it,lol. I`d love you long time!

I am rootin for your fix over what they suggested at my official main board website. I explained in great detail what I have happening and they only come to one,short conclusion. " Looks like the CPU is damaged or making bad contact. Have you tried reseating the CPU?"
I have tried reseating it and it didn`t fix it. I tried asking more questions but was imediately shot down,like what they said was the gospel.

I can accept a bad cpu,just was hoping for more discussion about things I could try.

So thanks for your advice Rawredrex. I`ll try out what you`ve outlined later tonight and cross my figers it works!

the errata data issue (or whatever they are told to say)they may or may not be talking about has nothing to do with this imho. reseating the cpu ? how funny is that... obviously would be affecting other aspects of your computing life.
i would literally write down every aspect of every page of bios as it is now just in case changes made don't work and the system sets everything to 'default.' you will learn much too if you write it all down, there is no fire here, take your time.

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

Glad to say I got it fixed,kinda. I ended up getting it to run on 3 gigs but it won`t start with this 4th stick in. I can remove any of the other stix and replace it with this one left over and it will start,stick one in that last slot and no post.

I`m thinking I`ll be happy with this. I prolly wouldn`t gain that much more with the other anyways. I bet if I bought some new ram that was AMD tested and all matched, I could add it all no problem. From everything I`ve read this is one finicky mobo when it comes to ram.

I can`t really say what fixed it. After loading fail safe defaults (for a change) I removed the ram from slot 3 and tried in slot 4 and I`ll be damned,it posted. I let it boot up,than I shut down and added one stick. it posted.... I was freekin GIDDY,lol. I let it boot up and I shut down again,stuck that fourth one in there and...... no post. Tried several times and its justa no go for this fourth one.

But I`m not bitchin. Now I have alot more confidence in this mobo and I guess 3`s close enough!

Thanks alot for the advice. Its helped immensely. W/o it,I would have been depending on that official forum and chasing a phantom cpu problem.

Many Thanks

 

[RawHeadRex]

Glad to say I got it fixed,kinda. I ended up getting it to run on 3 gigs but it won`t start with this 4th stick in. I can remove any of the other stix and replace it with this one left over and it will start,stick one in that last slot and no post.

I`m thinking I`ll be happy with this. I prolly wouldn`t gain that much more with the other anyways. I bet if I bought some new ram that was AMD tested and all matched, I could add it all no problem. From everything I`ve read this is one finicky mobo when it comes to ram.

I can`t really say what fixed it. After loading fail safe defaults (for a change) I removed the ram from slot 3 and tried in slot 4 and I`ll be damned,it posted. I let it boot up,than I shut down and added one stick. it posted.... I was freekin GIDDY,lol. I let it boot up and I shut down again,stuck that fourth one in there and...... no post. Tried several times and its justa no go for this fourth one.

But I`m not bitchin. Now I have alot more confidence in this mobo and I guess 3`s close enough!

Thanks alot for the advice. Its helped immensely. W/o it,I would have been depending on that official forum and chasing a phantom cpu problem.

Many Thanks

you're very welcome, we uo'rs need to stick together. well done.


One can never be ... too rich, too thin or




have too much memory !

 

[Beer_Cayse]

Ya know ... I'm willing to bet that 4th slot has a bad connection. If your RAM is all on par and any stick you place in that slot causes issues but works elsewhere it has to be the slot or connections handling it.

 

[Mitzlplik_SP]

Ya know ... I'm willing to bet that 4th slot has a bad connection. If your RAM is all on par and any stick you place in that slot causes issues but works elsewhere it has to be the slot or connections handling it.

Thats entirely true. It may be just that but I have my reservations about this board. It has documented issues with 4 stix,doesn`t matter if they are 1 gig or 2. I was only after 4 gigs,knowing it`d only report 3.5 or whatever,so I`m happy with 3gigs total for now. Maybe this spring when I get called back to work I`ll buy two 2 gig AMD tested sticks and cross my fingers,lol.

For me it was a victory as soon as I plugged the second stick into an orange slot and it posted. MSI forums are littered with K9A2 headaches over ram/posting issues. I feel like I dodged a bullet,lol.

I play Godfather2 & The Witcher on max settings along with battlefield hero`s. This thing is everything I was hoping for w00t!! Can not wait to get my NFS Shift,might hafta burn uptown today.

And the EC.... wow,all I can say is fluid. It had its problems until I figured out how to set the affinity for the UOSA.exe.

I hope that second bank isn`t dead,it definately does look like it may be. I`ll know for sure when I get some better quality ram that instals like ram should. Pop it in and start it up. Never had such a pancake of a time just adding ram before,lol.

 

[Lefty]

XP 32 bit only recognizes 3gb of memory.

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

Ya know ... I'm willing to bet that 4th slot has a bad connection. If your RAM is all on par and any stick you place in that slot causes issues but works elsewhere it has to be the slot or connections handling it.

The video card takes up the other gig I bet.

-Lorax

 

[RawHeadRex]

The video card takes up the other gig I bet.

-Lorax

you mean the video card memory is included in the cap memory 32bit will address ? it doesn't work like that if that's what you're implying. windows see's all 4 gigs in system properties, of that windows itself can only address 3.5 actually. of that 3.5, windows can only use 3 and the other 512 goes to manage 'hardware'. its unclear what that really means but the video card memory has no bearing on the memory controller on his cpu or the hypertrans of the mobo. when i mod'd a sliver section of nforcershq this was a gynormous issue.

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

you mean the video card memory is included in the cap memory 32bit will address ? it doesn't work like that if that's what you're implying. windows see's all 4 gigs in system properties, of that windows itself can only address 3.5 actually. of that 3.5, windows can only use 3 and the other 512 goes to manage 'hardware'. its unclear what that really means but the video card memory has no bearing on the memory controller on his cpu or the hypertrans of the mobo. when i mod'd a sliver section of nforcershq this was a gynormous issue.

That's not true.

The 32-bit operating system can only address 2^32 of memory space. The graphics card frame buffer for each head is mapped and if the graphics card has shard memory or each head has its own memory then all that memory for each is added. A discussion on paging would get a little more complicated.

To see how this works go into your device manager and change the view to view resources by type. Then select memory.

Everything is mapped into a 32-bit address space including each video card or each head of the video card. This allows you to see exactly how limited your system may be.

The A0000 is VGA. Even the motherboard takes up memory and everything that will be accessed by the processor takes up memory space.

-Lorax

 

[RawHeadRex]

That's not true.

The 32-bit operating system can only address 2^32 of memory space. The graphics card frame buffer for each head is mapped and if the graphics card has shard memory or each head has its own memory then all that memory for each is added. A discussion on paging would get a little more complicated.

To see how this works go into your device manager and change the view to view resources by type. Then select memory.

Everything is mapped into a 32-bit address space including each video card or each head of the video card. This allows you to see exactly how limited your system may be.

The A0000 is VGA. Even the motherboard takes up memory and everything that will be accessed by the processor takes up memory space.

-Lorax

you are correct. question for you, if someone runs two 2gig cards in sli hypothetically, would those 4 gigs of frame buffer limit how much memory would show in windows AND how much windows could use ?

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

you are correct. question for you, if someone runs two 2gig cards in sli hypothetically, would those 4 gigs of frame buffer limit how much memory would show in windows AND how much windows could use ?

There are two fundamental areas you need to review in a system when designing. The processor arithmetic widths and interface bus widths and then the operating system compiled machine code support. A 32-bit OS will not utilize the machine code operations for larger than 2^32 accesses.

You will need a 64-bit operating system and 64-bit processor to get the hardware working properly, for the question...

Yes, if you have a 32-bit operating system you would not be able to map all the video memory into your system along with the installed memory sticks. Hard limitations occur from mismatched designs. How much memory shows depends on design factors and that depends on hardware and driver capabilities. The OS will attempt to plug-n-play devices based on the hardware and driver limitations and map the system devices. You could install the video cards in your system and get no memory sticks recognized because the video card driver advertizes only the full memory space of each video head. Or, you could get a system that says it will only map one video head of one video card's memory into the system and the other three heads and other video card will not be installed during boot. There can be limits to the number of memory sticks recognized because of this fundamental limitation of plug-n-play driver installs and memory mapped I/O.

A 64-bit hardware/software system would not have a problem.

-Lorax

 

[RawHeadRex]

There are two fundamental areas you need to review in a system when designing. The processor arithmetic widths and interface bus widths and then the operating system compiled machine code support. A 32-bit OS will not utilize the machine code operations for larger than 2^32 accesses.

You will need a 64-bit operating system and 64-bit processor to get the hardware working properly, for the question...

Yes, if you have a 32-bit operating system you would not be able to map all the video memory into your system along with the installed memory sticks. Hard limitations occur from mismatched designs. How much memory shows depends on design factors and that depends on hardware and driver capabilities. The OS will attempt to plug-n-play devices based on the hardware and driver limitations and map the system devices. You could install the video cards in your system and get no memory sticks recognized because the video card driver advertizes only the full memory space of each video head. Or, you could get a system that says it will only map one video head of one video card's memory into the system and the other three heads and other video card will not be installed during boot. There can be limits to the number of memory sticks recognized because of this fundamental limitation of plug-n-play driver installs and memory mapped I/O.

A 64-bit hardware/software system would not have a problem.

-Lorax

very well explained thank you for that Lorax. Surely I was affected by this limit yet failed to recognize the sign/s, I can only guess/hope... now i'm really confused because not only were all four ram slots populated and two video cards, I had an xfi card at the bottom of it all. before you said somthing about some of the mapped video memory could be shared, did you mean shared in the way certain irq's can be shared ?

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

very well explained thank you for that Lorax. Surely I was affected by this limit yet failed to recognize the sign/s, I can only guess/hope... now i'm really confused because not only were all four ram slots populated and two video cards, I had an xfi card at the bottom of it all. before you said somthing about some of the mapped video memory could be shared, did you mean shared in the way certain irq's can be shared ?

Are you sure that the SLI capable cards had all that memory enabled in the system at boot? I suspect that some of your video outputs were not being used so the 4GB of video memory was not memory mapped during the plugnplay process. Or, are you saying you successfully enabled four video outputs across two video cards that have 4GB total and all memory sticks in the system totaling 4GB for a combined 8GB mapped into a 32-bit windows operating system? If you are saying windows 32-bit OS can access 8GB of memory I don't believe it. Fundamentally, if you have a 4GB video card and only use one video output then only one frame buffer will be mapped and you would be less than 1GB. If you are saying you are in a 64-bit system then of course all that memory could be mapped.

Shared memory meaning two or more video outputs share the same memory interface on the video card.

-Lorax

 

[RawHeadRex]

Are you sure that the SLI capable cards had all that memory enabled in the system at boot? I suspect that some of your video outputs were not being used so the 4GB of video memory was not memory mapped during the plugnplay process. Or, are you saying you successfully enabled four video outputs across two video cards that have 4GB total and all memory sticks in the system totaling 4GB for a combined 8GB mapped into a 32-bit windows operating system? If you are saying windows 32-bit OS can access 8GB of memory I don't believe it. Fundamentally, if you have a 4GB video card and only use one video output then only one frame buffer will be mapped and you would be less than 1GB. If you are saying you are in a 64-bit system then of course all that memory could be mapped.

Shared memory meaning two or more video outputs share the same memory interface on the video card.

-Lorax

ahhh ok yes that does make some sense. first of all i only have two 512 cards in sli going through a matroxTH2GO out to three monitors. it's the only way to get sli AND out to three monitors at the same time, usually its one or the other(nvidia.) I read about people having 2 gig video cards so that's why I mentioned it before. ya back then i was running xp 32bit. oh well thanks for clearing that up

 

[gjohnson5]

IMHO the bios upgrade isnt the problem

Please check the cas latency and the timings of the ram that was in the system. Then check the cas latency and timings of the ram you added.

It sounds like you have an AMI bios where you can set the memory controller to use run CAS 2.5 (for instance) in the bios. Sometimes mismatch ram will work as long as you run the entire system in a slower configuration. You will probably still have instabilities, such as freezes and lock ups doing so. But it sounds like the bios is configured to run the memory at a configuration that all of the ram cannot support. Hence you're getting the message "overclocking failed" This can also happen when the bios auto configures the memory controller to run at a low Cas Latency and timings that all the ram cannot support

 

[Shamus Turlough]

XP 32 bit only recognizes 3gb of memory.

Beg to differ. Depends on the system board and CPU.

Open up your boot.ini file in the root of your system drive. At the end of the line for your XP installation, add "/PAE" without the quotes. This will enable the physical address extensions which will allow you to use up to 4GB of memory (the upper limit in XP Pro).

XP SP3 I believe makes this change for you, but im not 100% sure.