RAM problem

[elredir]

a few days ago i bought a new ram,the same company and model as the one i have,a Kingmax mpxd4-ddr1g400

separate the rams have 1 gb,but when i put both of them onto the motherboard
my system has a total of 1,5 gb of ram

thinking that the slot were the problem i swapped their placement on the slots,but to no resolve,tested the old ram i had on the,until then unused slot,and it had 1gb,alone

but,in PCWizzard,with both ram installed,it shows me that i have 2gb of physical ram memory
but anywhere else i look in my system(dxdiag,bios,etc) it shows that i have 1,5gb

aside from that since i installed the new ram,my computer started to work slower,loading stuff slower,and even freezing if i open more than 3-4 programs at once

my motherboard is an Asus p5rd1-vm

 

[BlargHonk]

Sounds like you have a defective stick.

Use this to test: http://www.memtest.org/

Note, it's not a normal application, you have to burn it onto a disk, and boot from that disk.

 

[Dr Super Good]

What OS are you using and what graphic card do you have?

Some OS versions have limits on the amount of memory they can address (usually 4GB for a 32bit OS). This limit is the sum of both main memory and graphic memory as well as some miscilanious hardware or OS dependant adressing areas. If you have too much memory on your graphic cards (is possible but unlikly on a DDR1 system) then you may run out of addressing space for a 32bit OS. 64bit OS do not really have this problem as their memory limits are currently unobtainable for normal PC users.

Also make sure your pagefile is large enough. The way memory opperates prefers sufficiently sized pagefiles to help support the main system memory. For 2GB of memory I would advise a pagefile of between 2 and 4 GB.

 

[elredir]

@BlargHonk
whats a defective stick?

@Dr Super Good
well my os is a windows XP 32bit,and my graphics card is a Powercolor hd 4650 with 1gb ddr3 memory
and my pagefile is set,on all drivers on min 2 am max 4 gb,the total pagefile is around 8gb

 

[Dr Super Good]

XP 32bit should allocate upto 4 GB of memory.
You have 3 GB of memory inserted (2 GB main and 1 GB graphic).
You are allocating 2.5 GB of memory (1.5 GB main and 1 GB graphic).

This seems very low. I know that XP often allocates less than its full limit due to reserved ranges for devices and the OS but most people are saying the limit is near 3GB and not 2.5.

I guess a memory test would be a good start, it is always nice to know if the memory is fully functional for a start. Next try and update your motherboard BIOS, it could be the memory controler on it does not support all that RAM and so an update is needed (also check if other people with the same board have this problem). If both of these fail, you may wish to look into an OS upgrade to 64bit windows 7 (avoid 64bit XP due to poor compatibility and vista due to inefficiencies) as it could be a stupid addressing limit but keep in mind you have to make sure your hardware is 64bit compatibile.

 

[elredir]

i found on some bios update forum(cant remember the name)a thread where the op had the same motherboard as mine and had almost the same problem,except his sistem was reading all of the ram,but with both of them it slowed down,
he said that on the Asus forums people where saying it was a bios issue buthe had the last version of bios available,and that kinda worried me

i'll try to update the bios,i hope it solves the slowing down problem too cuz it's starting to get very annoying

 

[Dr Super Good]

The slowing is generally due to increased memory read times in the case of a cache miss. Especially old processors with low cache sizes and DDR1 are quite prone to memeory read time slowing down.

The reason modern computers support so much memory is due to advancements with pipelines meaning cache misses are less serious, more cache so cache misses are less often, faster memory technologies such as DDR3 so cache misses waste less time and dual / tri / quad channel support so multiple memory modules are read in parallel instead of series (reducing cache miss time waste). Especially if you asigned large amounts of main memory as an AGP buffer it can cause your system to preform stupidly slowly (mine could not even watch full screen youtube yet older systems could).

 

[elredir]

but is there any remedy to this??

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yes, keep RAM clock rates high and make sure they are used in an efficient configuration taking advantage of multi channel memory controlers when possible.

In the BIOS, avoid huge ammounts of AGP buffer memory. I advise 128 MB atmost (even though 256 is possible).

 

[elredir]

i tried setting the clock rates,a few days ago, at the rams 200mhz timing(3-4-4-8)but i looked in aida64 to see on what clock rates the system was working on and it showed 3-4-0-8,then i disabled the "configure ram by spd" option ,but there where the same timings in aida(3-4-0-8)
besides that my motherboard doesn't support multiple channels


i think the last thing to do would be to update the bios...but i looked on the asus forums and a lot of people with the same motherboard as mine had the same problems,and updating the bios dindt solve nothing to any of them,and to some(quite a lot)updating the bios brought even more problems,like the motherboard not recognizing the graphics card and other stuff
and to none of the threads was there any solution,only on one a moderator said that it would work with a 2 ram card kit of 1gb each(from crucial,if i recall correctly),but that is not an option for me,besides i dont thing i can even find those card in my country...

really dont know what to do...