RAM Upgrade worth the buy?

[mbco2001]

I am thinking of doubling my RAM in my system, but it seems I recall seeing somewhere that 32bit systems wont see an entire 4GB of RAM. Is this true? My spec's are below

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D NF4 MOBO
AMD Athlon 64 processor (1800MHz)
2GB Gskill DDR PC3200 RAM (dual channel)
Nvidia Geforce GT240 GFX card


Would I see any big difference with ANYTHING, as related to doubling the memory and adding another dual channel kit, to make 4gb ram?

[Khalil]

You will see 3.2 gigs of ram. I doubt your system will improve much. Save the money and build youself a new system. I would not spend anymore on this one.

[ryuk999]

In a 32bit OS you'll use about 3 - 3.25GB of the ram installed.

I would save your money up for a more supreme upgrade unless you see your ram consumption getting pretty high (85%+ in use when in the program you want to run).

Edit: lol Khalil.. you beat me to it.

[glc]

If you do anything, put a 2x512 kit in for a total of 3 gigs. That would cost less than 50 bucks.

[Khalil]

Originally Posted by ryuk999 Edit: lol Khalil.. you beat me to it.

It is all the damn coffee I had today I am super charged. I built a lot of machines today, I will crash shortly and leave you guys to it. LOL

[ryuk999]

Originally Posted by Khalil It is all the damn coffee I had today I am super charged. I built a lot of machines today, I will crash shortly and leave you guys to it. LOL

Woohoo we can have our forum back from the super-hyper-active-coffee-monster-professional-system-builder! heh jus jokes.

[mbco2001]

Thanks for the input guys!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-047-_-Product

That is what I have, and if I follow up on what GLC said (dual channel 512X2), that leaves me at the following

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231012

Does the difference in CAS Latency mean anything?

[ryuk999]

Not much other than milliseconds.

[mbco2001]

Originally Posted by ryuk999 Not much other than milliseconds.

Not as schooled in this stuff as you guys...so I take it that means this RAM will be perfectly fine?

[ryuk999]

It would seems so, unfortunately DFI doesn't have any QVL list to be 100% certain on it....at least I couldn't find any QVL.

[glc]

That kit should work okay.

[mbco2001]

Alrighty then...got the ram, and installed it. The only two channels left (yellow) is where I installed the RAM sticks. Upon initial boot, I had to power down the machine quickly because a fan wire got stuck in the fan LOL. Upon next boot, the pc got all the way to the password prompt for windows, but never showed the prompt. So I hard-reset again and this time, started in safe mode, and got a "PFN_LIST_CORRUPT" stop error (0X0000004E).

So, I pulled both sticks of ram out, and viola, machine starts back no problems.

So, here we go LOL. DO I need to do anything as far as being in BIOS maybe? Or should this be a plug-and-go type deal?

[glc]

You may have to tweak some things in the bios. This is one reason I try to stay away from DFI boards.

Try running it on just the new pair. One or both modules could be defective. Go to www.memtest.org and download memtest86+, run it on each stick individually.

[mbco2001]

Originally Posted by glc You may have to tweak some things in the bios. This is one reason I try to stay away from DFI boards. Try running it on just the new pair. One or both modules could be defective. Go to www.memtest.org and download memtest86+, run it on each stick individually.

What should I "tweak" or would you have to know the settings on it? I got an email response from Gskill,

Dear Customer

Make sure to set voltage to the highest value of both memory packages. Then, increase NB Voltage to 1.40V and that should stablize everything.

Thank you
GSKILL SUPPORT


But, the NorthBridge is already at 1.48V (according to Smartguardian) and the ratings on both sets of ram are 2.6V - 2.75V. So do I need to turn the DRAM voltage up to 2.75? Its currently at 2.59v (according to smartguardian). Again, I have NEVER messed with any of this stuff before, so I;m not really particular on even how to do it. Im sure its in BIOS, but thats about it.

[rwest]

Ram can be picky. I added some samsung ram along side my installed corasir and had issues with booting. So I tried the samsung by itself and it worked fine, as did the corsair. Just for the heck of it; I booted with the samsung ram first, and then tried adding the corsair-It worked...and in dual channel.

I had an issue omce before with pny ram not working well with samsung ram, both were ddr 400, but the memory timings were different. The pc ran fine for two months before showing signs of incompatability. Good luck.