I wanted to upgrade my system aroud the holidays but I found myself running low on cash. I decided to upgrade the stuff that was critical, and wait until I had the funds before I did a full upgrade. I bought a a new vid card, HD, and a stick of 512mb pc3200 ram. I'm running a kt266a chipset board, so I know it doesn't support speeds of over pc2700, but I figured the ram would automatically run underclocked. When I tried running it, the system became unstable. In a casual conversation with one of the pc people at best buy, i was told that I was lucky that I didn't ruin the mobo, and running ram that high at low speeds was bad for both the ram and the mobo. Im wondering if I just got a defective stick, or if I need to put the ram in a different slot (was running it in the third slot instead of the first). Ive heard that mixing ram in any case can be a bad idea. So what gives? Should I try running the ram again? Can i damage my motherboard?was the best buy guy talkin out his ass?
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Underclocking Memory?
- Thread starter Razer1
- Start date
no, usually bestbuy people are retarded. Running faster ram at slower speeds will definately not mess the ram up.
your ram will default to the fastest speed of the slowest stick of ram in there. What if any other brands of ram do you have in there? Are all of your rambanks full? (this could cause instability if all of them are filled, some boards get fussy.
the diff ram brands could not be playing well together. you can download memtest86 it runs off a bootable floppy, or cd. checks to see if you have bad ram or not. Let it run for a few hours overnight. It's 3am sorry if none of this made sense, just a few tips from me. im sure more people have other suggestions.
your ram will default to the fastest speed of the slowest stick of ram in there. What if any other brands of ram do you have in there? Are all of your rambanks full? (this could cause instability if all of them are filled, some boards get fussy.
the diff ram brands could not be playing well together. you can download memtest86 it runs off a bootable floppy, or cd. checks to see if you have bad ram or not. Let it run for a few hours overnight. It's 3am sorry if none of this made sense, just a few tips from me. im sure more people have other suggestions.
My Best Buy experience:
This guy (Say it like Scarface "This fucking guy") comes up to me and wants to sell me something, so me, being a saleperson, and a bit of a nerd, attempt standard nerd discussion, so I can give him some rope, right?
He goes on to tell me that he's been on "a waiting list" for the new "AMD motherboard" for the new "Intel CPU" for the past 3 years, and now its going to be the fastest thing out there, and that he's one of the best in the country at Counter Strike...
However, he'd never heard of CAS latency, nor could he indicate if the store carried any low density PC133 SDRAM, and he though CAL was a "West Coast thing..."
This cannot be said of all Best Buy (or other retail store employees) as I know of two that I'd deem very competent (though neither could close a nun's legs with a prayer book) in their knowledge. If you don't know, do your homework on the internet, and starting here is the best place to do so.
Otherwise, you may wonder how they got those extra 16 pins off the P4 to fit in a SocketA board...
EDIT: Whoops, forgot about your problems! Alright! The memory is DDR PC3200, which is identical to PC2100, with the exception of it being tolerant to higher clockspeeds, more voltage, etc - The chipset is going to run as fast as it can, or as fast as you tell it to, in this case 266mhz - So, if the RAM will do 400mhz, where's the problem? If your board doesn't like the memory, try removing the rest of it, tossing that in DIMM1, and putting it through some Memtest to see if the stick is bad, and if not, then try it one stick at a time... As a rule, your largest stick of RAM should go in DIMM1, btw, and make sure that you're not using SPD for timings, and that you manually set them - Try CAS3 to start, and work your way up from there until you encounter trouble. Don't be afraid to give it a little more voltage, in this case cooking the RAM and returning it, in my opinion, is acceptable, in fact, you should even suggest that said employee recommended it, so you can prevent him from ill-advising another customer. Either way, I'd mention it to the manager - I did in my case - Imagine if someone less saavy needs assistance, and this jerkoff costs them time, money, and frustration on something critical... Think of it as a good deed of the day, and don't worry about him - McDonald's is always hiring.
This guy (Say it like Scarface "This fucking guy") comes up to me and wants to sell me something, so me, being a saleperson, and a bit of a nerd, attempt standard nerd discussion, so I can give him some rope, right?
He goes on to tell me that he's been on "a waiting list" for the new "AMD motherboard" for the new "Intel CPU" for the past 3 years, and now its going to be the fastest thing out there, and that he's one of the best in the country at Counter Strike...
However, he'd never heard of CAS latency, nor could he indicate if the store carried any low density PC133 SDRAM, and he though CAL was a "West Coast thing..."
This cannot be said of all Best Buy (or other retail store employees) as I know of two that I'd deem very competent (though neither could close a nun's legs with a prayer book) in their knowledge. If you don't know, do your homework on the internet, and starting here is the best place to do so.
Otherwise, you may wonder how they got those extra 16 pins off the P4 to fit in a SocketA board...
EDIT: Whoops, forgot about your problems! Alright! The memory is DDR PC3200, which is identical to PC2100, with the exception of it being tolerant to higher clockspeeds, more voltage, etc - The chipset is going to run as fast as it can, or as fast as you tell it to, in this case 266mhz - So, if the RAM will do 400mhz, where's the problem? If your board doesn't like the memory, try removing the rest of it, tossing that in DIMM1, and putting it through some Memtest to see if the stick is bad, and if not, then try it one stick at a time... As a rule, your largest stick of RAM should go in DIMM1, btw, and make sure that you're not using SPD for timings, and that you manually set them - Try CAS3 to start, and work your way up from there until you encounter trouble. Don't be afraid to give it a little more voltage, in this case cooking the RAM and returning it, in my opinion, is acceptable, in fact, you should even suggest that said employee recommended it, so you can prevent him from ill-advising another customer. Either way, I'd mention it to the manager - I did in my case - Imagine if someone less saavy needs assistance, and this jerkoff costs them time, money, and frustration on something critical... Think of it as a good deed of the day, and don't worry about him - McDonald's is always hiring.
diredesire
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2003
- Messages
- 4,516
best buy guy = BSing you... at least he can do it with a straight face...
Anyways, i imagine the problem would be with a faulty stick of ram, so memtest like Sin said, if not, your cheap pc3200 is not capable of running tighter memories even at lower speeds (like your previous stick (MAYBE) is. If the lower speed stick is running a cRAS of 2 and your 3200 is by default 3 it may not be able to run. Just take the 3200 out, look at the default timings in your bios, make a mental note, and then swap sticks and see if they are any different. Change your CAS settings to the lowest number that both of them will run... i'd say 3-3-3-11 is safe, and acceptable performancewise, judging from the chipset you're using.
Anyways, i imagine the problem would be with a faulty stick of ram, so memtest like Sin said, if not, your cheap pc3200 is not capable of running tighter memories even at lower speeds (like your previous stick (MAYBE) is. If the lower speed stick is running a cRAS of 2 and your 3200 is by default 3 it may not be able to run. Just take the 3200 out, look at the default timings in your bios, make a mental note, and then swap sticks and see if they are any different. Change your CAS settings to the lowest number that both of them will run... i'd say 3-3-3-11 is safe, and acceptable performancewise, judging from the chipset you're using.
thanks for the help. ive been wrassalin all day with a ornery hard drive, so im kind of fed up with hardware for the moment, but i'll definatly let you all know what happens when I swap sticks tommorow...
oh, and as for the best buy guy, he was actually more knowledgable than most i've dealt with. He actually knew what pc2100 and 2700 meant. Once, I asked a clerk at the pc repair desk for some thermal paste, and he was quick to tell me that they didn't have any thermal paste, but they had plenty of thermal grease. Then when he was giving me the artic silver (they kept it behind the counter), he wanted to know what it was used for. This from the guy who was supposed to be fixing PC's...
oh, and as for the best buy guy, he was actually more knowledgable than most i've dealt with. He actually knew what pc2100 and 2700 meant. Once, I asked a clerk at the pc repair desk for some thermal paste, and he was quick to tell me that they didn't have any thermal paste, but they had plenty of thermal grease. Then when he was giving me the artic silver (they kept it behind the counter), he wanted to know what it was used for. This from the guy who was supposed to be fixing PC's...
Yes, BestBuy, CompUSA, Circuit City, they are all retarded when it comes to knowledge of anything they sell.
Your problem could be as simple as the bios set to use SPD setting for memory timings. SPD setting reads the memory timings from the memory modules and attempts to set the memory timings in the bios to those numbers. This can cause problems like you see.
SPD has been found ot be VERY BAD on a LOT of systems. Not all, but most.
Try setting the timings to optimal.
Your problem could be as simple as the bios set to use SPD setting for memory timings. SPD setting reads the memory timings from the memory modules and attempts to set the memory timings in the bios to those numbers. This can cause problems like you see.
SPD has been found ot be VERY BAD on a LOT of systems. Not all, but most.
Try setting the timings to optimal.
TheMostWantedPolishTwin
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2000
- Messages
- 6,206
running faster ram on slower speeds will allow you to use tighter timings... try other slots - nothing bad should happen to mobo, unless the ram is defective or somethig...