ddr ram and motherboard compatibility

marcphisto

i was just wondering if anyone else had this problem or has any ideas how to fix it!

i have a p4vmm2 pcb3.1 elite motherboard. i had 512MB (2x256) PC100 of sdram in it and had the opportunity to upgrade to 512MB (2x256) PC2100 of DDR for free. so i did.

now i can only put in one memory bank of DDR. if i put in a second bank my machine gets the blue screen of death citing a problem with the nv4_disp.dll. this is part of the nvidia display drivers.

i have an nvidia geforce 4 mx with 64MB onboard.

i am aware of problems with DDR and graphics cards but the usual story is to upgrade the BIOS, which i have done. All my drivers are up to date so i am quite frankly at a loss as to how to fix this.

i have also tested three individual memory banks, all 256MB, and they work but as i say if i try two banks together i get the aul BSD.

i was in touch with elite and they said that if the BIOS upgrade didn't work then the memory is at fault, i don't understand how this could be considering they work individually.

if anyone has any ideas/suggestions i would be most grateful.

Sir Random

Did you switch the jumper on the
J2A/B/C/D and J3A/B/C/D DDR/SDR DRAM type selectors ?

They should both be all pins shorted for DDR, all pins open for SDR

marcphisto

good advice!

that wasn't in the manual i got with the mobo but it was in the one i downloaded from the elite site! which i of course didn't check until your advice.

my next problem is how to short the pins as there is no jumper to do this!

MadKevo

Originally posted by marcphisto
my next problem is how to short the pins as there is no jumper to do this!

you may have a couple not in use on hard disks or CD/DVD ROMs...
/MK

marcphisto

i've thought of this, but it's a 4x20 pin bank and trying to find that many spare jumpers is next to impossible! i've managed to find 3 so far.

thanks very much for the help, so far i've gotten better advice than from the company that makes the mobo.

Sir Random

I think there are long jumpers to short multiple pairs of pins which should have come with the mobo.

marcphisto

that's my problem now, they didn't come with the mobo and i've no idea where to get them! but at least i've now had the problem narrowed down for me.

what confused me in the first place was that in my hard copy manual it says to open the jp1 pins and doesn't even mention the j2a/b/c/d j3a/b/c/d pins!

thanks a million guys, if i can find the jumpers i'll let you know how i get on!

i had become quite exaspirated and had ordered 2 x 512MB of sdram, me mates getting them off ccity for me @ €39.99 a pop b4 vat. it's a very good price so i figured i'd go for it.

i never thought i'd say this but i can't handle running with "only" 256MB or memory, and i don't even play many games!

dazberry

Originally posted by marcphisto
i had become quite exaspirated and had ordered 2 x 512MB of sdram, me mates getting them off ccity for me @ €39.99 a pop b4 vat. it's a very good price so i figured i'd go for it.

He's ripping you off, they're €39.00 ex VAT each - of course its €13 for delivery - so he's probably getting other stuff. I ordered 2 thru work this week with other stuff (they delivered in 3 hours!). Micron branded - pretty good.

However if you can get the DDR working do, its much better and you'll get better performance regardless. I had an Elite Athlon board, with both DDR and SDRAM support (not at the same time - similar to yourself). I had problems when I changed over from SDRAM to DDR because Win2k seemed not to like the new memory timings and would fail to complete booting. Eventually had to do a reinstall.

D.

marcphisto

he puts systems together for people so that delivery is paid by them

that's another thing about my mobo, the only (windows) os i can install is XP, i get an "boot media inaccessable" error if i try to install 2k! the mind is well and truely boggled at that one!

i take your point on the ddr, i would if i could but i'm at a loss as to why jumpers weren't included, or proper instructions in the manual for that matter.

i'm always telling others to rtfm and i do so myself, in this case to no avail!