Why won't my ram work together!? they're both the same speed!

[anoxxia]

I've gone to the good ol' friendly microcenter people but they have no real answer for me, or pretend like they do but tell me vague responses so I thought i'd ask here...

i have two pairs of memory (both DDR400) which both work great... separately unfortunately. 1 pair is a pair of gskill 1g sticks for 2gigs total with 2.5-2-2-5 timings, or something very close to that. The other, is a pair of corsair twinx 512x2 at 4-4-4-12 timings... I have a DFI lanparty motherboard with 4 DIMMS and i've tried every possible combination possible and they refuse to work together. Separately, they work fine. How do i get around this stupid issue!? any ideas? thoughts? thanks so much!

 

[techgeek]

The actual kit part numbers would help. The actual motherboard model would possibly help as well.

As to the timings, this must be DDR1 ram. The 512MB X 2 kit has pretty loose timings for DDR1 (almost look like DDR2) though. That or the 2GB kit has the lowest DDR2 timings I have ever seen. Unfortunately you are seeing first hand what trouble mixing two different brands of RAM can be.

Is this really important to you to run these two kits together? You could waste a lot of time and get no where, or worse (IMO) you could get it to work, but not be happy with the result.

To even have a chance, I would boot with the 2GB kit, and manually set your RAM timings to that of the kit with the (4-4-4-12) timings. Also you need to find out what both kits need for voltage to operate stably. Once you know this, you have to manually set the voltage to which ever is the highest (ie 2GB= 2.4V 1GB= 2.6V, so you set 2.6V).

I really hope this information helps. Those timings you stated are really weird, I would swear the 2GB kit was DDR1, and the 1GB kit was DDR2.

 

[Mogwilson]

Im not sure but you might have to set the ram timings so they match, set the ram timings at 4 4 4 12 for both, First you need to find out what voltage is required for each stick, If they can not match in any way u cant use them together.

cheers

 

[anoxxia]

for the Gskill memory.. i bought it off of Newegg and here are the specs

Model
Brand G.SKILL
Model F1-3200PHU2-2GBNS
Type 184-Pin DDR SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Speed DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Cas Latency 2.5
Timing 2.5-3-3-6
Voltage 2.6V - 2.75V
Heat Spreader Yes
Features Comprehensive rigorously tested in pair at dual channel environment
6 Layers PCB

As far as the corsairs... ic an't tell how much voltage they need from the internet :-\ the memory itself is pretty darn old i must say... at least like 3 years old but it still works!!! on the sticker it says...

CMX512-3200C2PT XMS3203v3.1
400 MHz CL2 0429002--3

yea...

my motherboard is a DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI ready... (AMD socket 939)
it was darn expensive when i bought it so i know it's pretty decent and has a BIOS that allows me to edit a bunch of things.

how do i proceed? i mean... 3 gigs of memory is always better than 2 gigs i'm sure right!?

 

[anoxxia]

oh and another weird thing... for my processor in the startup and CPUID... it always ssays AMD Athlon X2 3800+ blah blah.. but also... AMD Hammer Family processor..."Model Unknown"

weird huh? do u think that affects anything/performance?

 

[pcgamer12]

<delete>

 

[pcgamer12]

Either way, just run the new 2GB kit, 1GB more won't help too much and isn't worth the extra time spent trying to make them work together, just go buy another 2GB kit identical to the new one you have. RAM is cheap anyways, I have 2GB and it's plenty to game with.

 

[anoxxia]

they're both ddr 1 i'm pretty sure. isn't ddr2 the 240pin version? i definitely don't have any of that

 

[pcgamer12]

ahhh... okay, so you bought the wrong RAM to work together.

For 2 sets of different RAM to work together, they must, run at same voltage, same timings, same speed. Best to get identical RAM kits.

 

[B-Unit]

The Corsair sticks are just old school, and wont run at the speedy timings that the G.Skill does.

I agree, its not worth the effort and even then its only a maybe.

As to the CPU-Z thing dont worry bout it, my Opteron 165 does the same thing.

 

[anoxxia]

aww... two sticks of useless memory that i cant sell for more than 10 bucks... wasted...

 

[Mogwilson]

Look to get the latest bios flash as well.

cheers

 

[anoxxia]

actually, i fixed it by calling DFI and asking them about it!!

i had to disable some "CPC" command in the BIOS. That was it!!!

 

[pavel-]

For reference:

Command Rate: Also known as Command Per Clock, this defines the delay between selecting a memory chip, and sending it commands. Set to one clock cycle or “Disabled” for the best performance.

(PCPlus, 2006, http://www.pcplus.co.uk/tutorials/hardware/optimise_your_bios )

edit: ending bracket got into the URL

 

[anoxxia]

pavel that's a dead link :-\

 

[pavel-]

edited