How do i run dual channel on biostar a77oe3

[jingerson]

I bought a biostar a77oe3 mobo a couple months ago and put a single pny ddr3 4gb stick and it's been running fine. I bought another stick of the same stuff and am trying to run dual channel but it wont do it. It just says i'm running the 1 stick. i've looked around on forums and I cant really find a solution.

any help would be appreciated
thanks!

 

[jitpublisher]

Welcome to the forums!
Well, not sure why that is, have you tried with just the new stick to make sure it is working correctly? If it is, you may have a bad board. Make certain you are putting the memory into the correct 2 slots, the Phenoms are picky about this. They don't really run in dual channel mode either, they use what is called "ganged" and "unganged". By default, with 2 sticks of memory, they run in the "unganged" mode. Phenoms have 2 memory controllers, and are actually faster this way. (if you have a Phenom processor)

 

[jingerson]

It happens that I do have a phenom 2. And after I read your post I went into the bios and restarted and the 8gb showed up in the startup. And windows wont load anymore. I took one stick out and it didn't help. Any ideas?

 

[jingerson]

So the non-booting thing was a different problem that i fixed when i looked through the bios. so ignore that.
When the computer first loads up it lists that it recognizes 8gb of ram. but when i check the control panel/ System folder, it says 3.25gb. i should also inform you that i'm running win xp. could that have something to do with it?

 

[jingerson]

so I just cant see it? or on a 32 bit system you cant have more than 4gb?

 

[jingerson]

but is my computer faster even though it's a 32-bit system? or do i need to get win 7 64 bit in order to utilize the 8gb?

 

[jingerson]

Best answer selected by jingerson.