Problem with new RAM

[martwick]

Hello everybody, here's the deal
Today I bought new RAM for my old rig (old doesn't mean I'm not using it )
At first I had some problems with Windows booting with both sticks, but I swapped their places and it was ok. Then I tried playing a couple of games and they crashes/freezed like 5-10 minutes into gameplay. This happened 5 times!I didn't use to have such problems with these games in particular, maybe the occasional freeze/crash, but it wasn't like this. I ran Prime95 using the option for testing more ram, it said that my rounding was 0.5, and it should be less than 0.4. My CPU is a Sempron 3100+ s754, I have 2x1GB DDR 400MHz o' ram, nothing has been changed in the bios settings, although my CPU was a bit overclocked but I returned it to normal.
So, any ideas?

 

[jemm]

Did you get 2 ram sticks, or just 1 to add to the old one?

 

[martwick]

I got 1 new one and added it to the old one.

 

[jemm]

Are the new ram the same (frequency, latency, voltage) as the old ram?

 

[blazorthon]

Mixing memory can fail and usually does when the memory sticks aren't more or less identical.

Frequency shouldn't be a problem because if one supports a higher frequency than the other then both modules will run at the highest frequency supported by both modules (and the CPU and motherboard). If one supports 333MHz and another supports 400MHz (assuming the motherboard and CPU also support 400MHz) then they will run at 333MHz for compatibility.

Latencies, the same thing should happen but this is more of a problem than frequency.

Now voltages is a big problem. If the voltages aren't the same then the chances of two kits working together go down significantly.

There are also other problems such as the DRAM density of 1GB modules.

Here is a link that may help you understand this problem better than I can explain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR_SDRAM#Chip_characteristics

Good luck.

 

[martwick]

Yeah I forgot to tell you I fixed it, I read my mobo manual and it said that when running more than 1 stick of ram, they should be at 333 MHz because of CPU limitations, so went into bios, underclocked from 400 and everything was fine

 

[blazorthon]

OK, glad to hear back good news.