RAM. cl2 cl2.5

PAPILLION

hi, i want to upgrade my machine to a gig of ram, ive got 2 pc2300 400Mhz 256MB twinmos twister which has a cash latency of 2

to get a 512 stick of this im looking at 110-120Euros

a 512 stick of cl2 the non tiwster ram (CL2.5) is only 70-80 Euros

i really can afford to pay the extra. would the 2 rams of different latencies work together?

CivilServant

No, the RAM would run as fast as the weakest link, ie. cl2.5

PAPILLION

poo ok cl2 it is.
thanks.

goodbye!

po0k

It makes sweet fsck all difference really.
CAS 2 - 3 made maybe 1-2 fps difference in Quake3.
You're talking about half the difference again.

Are you going to try and overclock it strongly?
There's also the RAS and RAS-to-CAS latencies to consider too

PAPILLION

already have the processor and the gfx card O/C

I actually have another problem in relation to this.

at the same time ive upgraded my girlfriends machine from 256MB DDR 2700
to 1Gig. however i tried to run Starwars galaxies and it crahsed repeatedly, I tried to run 3dMark and that crashed.
so i thought I'd try 768 a 512MB in slot 1 and 256MB in slot 2

the mother board is an MSI K7N2 Delta
it has dual mode for the ram, this kiks in if you put 1 stic in slot 1 or 2 and 1 in slot 3

at the moment im trying the 768 in slots 1 and 2, single mode. problem is 3dmark 03 crashed when i tried it again. it got further this time tho.

need to get this sorted b4 the missus gets home from work or im a gonner. lol.

gonna try it just 512 next and cross fingers. problem is i bought 768 MD or ram for it. i dont want to just use 256 of it. im not great at bios settings basicall stay away from them unless i have any probs. this is a prob. but im scared of bios, any help would be most appreciated.

my upgrade went fine tho.

CivilServant

Crashing is caused by an instability in one or more parts of the system. Is anything oced on ur gfs comp?

PAPILLION

nope.
:S

u dont think its the ram? cus it was fine before

CivilServant

Yeah it's mostly likely the ram then. Here are some suggestions:

Make sure both sticks are run at their rated speed ie PC2700.
Reduce the timings to the lowest possible settings for stability.
Run memtest (google it) just to verify that it is in fact the memory and not something else.
Read the manual to see what the board can take.

PAPILLION

thanks a mill.
board is supposed to take a max of 6gig. lol.

oh and where is a good place that explains timiings and speeds? im assuming this is all set up in bios?

CivilServant

Here's a googled page some explains some stuff. You can probably find more by googling.

On a side note, are the both the sticks dimms cos mixing a single sided module with a double sided one "might" not work. I say might cos I've an older system with that setup that does work. Good luck anywho.

PAPILLION

thanks for all ur help.

hmm. if dimm means it has chips on both sides and simm means on 1 side then the 2 256 are simms and the 512 is a dimm. however i tried it with just the 512 in slot 1. 3dmark wouldnt fire up.

now i have it running with a 256 in both 1 and 3 so its in dual mode and i caould do a complete 3dmark03 test. so sounds like a prob with the 512. gonna put the 512 into slot 1 now with the others in slot 2 and 3 and try memtest for 30mins or so. see what happens.

thanks again m8.

PAPILLION

little update. popped back in the 512 stick of twinmos fired up memtes. got an error straight away telling me ram was faulty and i should replace it.
without the 512 its perfect. thx again

netman

Just to clear things up, all modern PC's have DIMM's. They can be single-sided or dual-sided, it's got nothing to do with the SIMM/DIMM names.

SIMM's are old memory modules used in 386, 486 and some Pentium computers, which needed two matching memory modules (recognised as "banks") to work. That's where the name comes from - Single Inline Memory Module, it takes pairs of SIMMs, thus requiring the user to find two matching memory sticks in order to make it work.

DIMM's are the more recent memory modules, both SDRAM and DDR-DRAM. It stands for Double Inline Memory Module, and it means that one memory module populates two memory banks. No more need for finding matching memory modules and upgrading the memory modules in pairs.

Now, back to the problematic 512MB module... It could be faulty, but before you go through the hassle of getting it replaced, have you checked your BIOS settings? You might be trying to run it at a latency that the module doesn't support. (For example, running a CAS 2.5 module at CAS 2.0 generally results in system crashes, unless you get a really good memory module capable of working at CAS 2.0).

Have you tried upgrading the motherboard's BIOS ? It looks like MSI had lots of memory issues, there's over a dozen upgrades on their website for your motherboard, half of them fixing some memory problem:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_detail.php?UID=436

CivilServant

I've a pentium3 with one simm and one dimm, you don't need 2 banks of simms for it to work. So go figure that one out

po0k

32-bit simms were installed singly in 486s, because they onyl had 32-bit wide path
Pentiums had 64-bit wide so needed 2x 32-bit =64bit memory modules.
Pretty much the same thing as Dual channel today.

I think you have a SDRAM DIMM on that P3, and *maybe* a DDR-SDRAM.
You certainly don't have a simm.
unless you're mistaken about the chip.

What motherboard do you have?

netman

I'm absolutely sure noone was making Pentium 3 motherboards for SIMM memory. There are no chipsets out there that would support such a thing.

CivilServant

It's an old MSI 6151 motherboard. Slot 1 mobo, not sure bout the chipset. Couldn't find the manual on the net.

netman

It's the good old intel BX chipset, in my opinion the best chipset they ever made.
1 AGP slot, 4 PCI, 2 ISA and 3 DIMM (SDRAM) slots for memory.

You might have one single sided and one double sided module, but they're definitely DIMM's. (168-pin modules)