hi all,been a while since i been on.so hi everyone.my system has been running 1 gig of pc3200 400mhz corsair xms for a while now,no probs workin fine,its 2 sticks of 512mb.my mother board is the asus a8n sli deluxe,the mobo has 4 slots,2 blue and 2 black,ive got the corsair ram in the blue ones which is dual channel and works fine.yesterday i got a 1 gig strip of pc3200 400mhz ram,it was down to a very cheap price so i bought one as i wanted to run 2 gig to help out a bit on my gaming.i installed the 1 gig strip switched on its its only showing 1 and a half gig,ive tried a few configirations but cant seem to get the 2 gig i should be getting.this might sound stupid,but wat if i replaced that new 1 gig strip with 2 of 512mb strips and that would let me have a strip in every slot.cant understand why im not getting the 2 gig and im only getting 1 and a half.i sure the shop were i bought them would change the 1 gig strip for 2 512mb ones,appreciate any help at all.many thanks.

kevin
aberdeen,scotland

Sounds a bit odd; that board takes a gig in each slot to a max of four in total, so the only things I can think of are some sort of limit set (BI/OS, etc), or that the board or the new DIMM is faulty.

When you say:



can you confirm that this included trying the new 1Gb chip on its own? Did it show as 1Gb?

rhort thanks for reply,yes i tried the new 1 gig strip in the board by itself and it showed as 1 gig no problem.i looked at the manual i got with the mobo.it says that if u put in 1 stick then use slot b1 and if using 2 sticks use slot a1 and b1.slots a1 and b1 are blue and slots a2 and b2 are black.i was thinking that if i get another gig strip then i can fill 2 slots with the 512mb strips and the other 2 slots with a gig strip each,or wat i can do is exchange the gig strip i got for 2 512mb ones and that would fill the other slot.cant thing any other reasson why its not showing 2 gig and only 1.5 gig.wat do you thing mate.i am going into the pc shop later on to pick up a 19inch flat screen monitor,so i could ask him to change the 1 gig strip for 2 512mb ones.or i could bite the bullet and buy another 1 gig strip.appreciate any help.

kevin

kevin scott said:

Sounds like this is suggesting that it's the only way to get them running in dual channel mode, which won't work properly if they're not the same size chip, however, that doesn't explain why it doesn't work when you've got your existing 512s in DCM, unless of course the board is set to force DCM; can you check in the BI/OS if there's a way to stop that being the default?

rhort thanks for reply,yes i tried the new 1 gig strip in the board by itself and it showed as 1 gig no problem.i looked at the manual i got with the mobo.it says that if u put in 1 stick then use slot b1 and if using 2 sticks use slot a1 and b1.slots a1 and b1 are blue and slots a2 and b2 are black.i was thinking that if i get another gig strip then i can fill 2 slots with the 512mb strips and the other 2 slots with a gig strip each,or wat i can do is exchange the gig strip i got for 2 512mb ones and that would fill the other slot.cant thing any other reasson why its not showing 2 gig and only 1.5 gig.wat do you thing mate.i am going into the pc shop later on to pick up a 19inch flat screen monitor,so i could ask him to change the 1 gig strip for 2 512mb ones.or i could bite the bullet and buy another 1 gig strip.appreciate any help.

kevin

Well I think there's probably a fairly easy solution. Some boards require that each bank is filled with the same sized DIMMs, but you have mixed a 1gb and a 512mb stick in that bank, hence you're just seeing 1 channel worth of RAM, the 1GB & the 512mb.

Simple solution would be to buy another 1gb stick, or swap it for 2x512mb modules.