ABIT KG7 Motherboard RAM Problem

[golfnguy]

I have an ABIT KG7 motherboard (with an AMD Duran CPU) which has 4 slots for DDR PC2100 266MHz non-ECC RAM. Each slot will take up to a 1GB stick of RAM. I have been running with two sticks of 256MB DDR PC2100 RAM in dimm slots #4 & #3 with no problems. I tried to add two more sticks of 256MB DDR PC2100 RAM and the PC failed to boot. I have tried each of the new sticks separately in slot #4 and they both work. I was able to get the PC to boot once with just one additional new stick in slot #2 for a total of 768MB. When I then added the fourth stick, the PC would again not boot. When I took the fourth stick back out, the PC would no longer boot with 3 sticks. I had to go back to my original two sticks of RAM to get the PC to boot.

Any ideas how I can get the motherboard to recognize both additional sticks of RAM? By the way, one of the new RAM sticks is a PNY and I don?t recall what the other one is. Both were purchased at Best Buy.

Thanks.

 

[CurtCold]

I would try updating your bios, after looking around Abit, and your board specs, some of the bios revisions fix incompatability with certian types of RAM. Here is what I found on Abit's site.

Also looking here, PNY ram has been tested But not certified for this board. It did past the test though, so I would shoot for the bios update. I would also try some different configurations with the ram. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to get the board to post.

I like that board by the way, it's nice, hope you get all that ram screaming along.

 

[JackBurton]

You need registered ECC memory for more than 512MB on that board. It's not an Abit problem, it is a limitation with the 760 chipset. And yes, ALL of the memory has to be ECC to work past 512MBs.

 

[golfnguy]

It would have been nice if the Abit manual had pointed out the fact that I needed to use registered RAM to go above 512MB. Such is life I guess. Thanks Curt and Jack.

-- Del

 

[JackBurton]

No prob man.

 

[arswihart]

NO, I think some of that info may be wrong.

Go to www.sudhian.com/showfaqs.cfm?fid=4&fcid=2 for more info on RAM in the KG7

Here's what you really want to know:

Owners of the KG7-RAID motherboard should note that the AMD761 chipset used on the motherboard places some limitations on the memory that can be used. You have two options:

Up to two unbuffered DIMMs (up to 1GB each) of DDR RAM
Up to four registered DIMMs (up to 1GB each) of DDR RAM

and that's it!

You cannot mix unbuffered and registered RAM, nor can you officially have more than two unbuffered DIMMs (but note that several reviewers have found that four unbuffered DIMMs can be used providing they are of good quality and identical type). This is a limitation of the AMD chipset and not ABIT and it is not something that can be changed by a future BIOS release. Registered DIMMs cost approximately $10 more than unbuffered DIMMs for a 256MB module. If you intend to use more than two sticks of memory then make sure that all your memory is registered!! Note also that the memory bus is synchronous, meaning that it runs at the same speed as the front side bus (FSB). This means you must use PC1600 RAM with 200MHz DDR FSB processors and PC2100 RAM with 266MHz DDR FSB processors.

The maximum DDR memory support is about 3.5GB rather than 4GB. This limitation is caused by the PC architecture in which the missing 0.5GB of memory is due to addresses being reserved for PCI I/O space, AGP aperture mapping space and other onboard device I/O space. This limitation applies to all current motherboards and is due to the fact that 32-bit processors can only address a total of 4GB of memory.

ECC memory is fully supported.

 

[JackBurton]

NO, I think some of that info may be wrong.

Go to www.sudhian.com/showfaqs.cfm?fid=4&fcid=2 for more info on RAM in the KG7

Here's what you really want to know:

Owners of the KG7-RAID motherboard should note that the AMD761 chipset used on the motherboard places some limitations on the memory that can be used. You have two options:

Up to two unbuffered DIMMs (up to 1GB each) of DDR RAM
Up to four registered DIMMs (up to 1GB each) of DDR RAM

and that's it!

You cannot mix unbuffered and registered RAM, nor can you officially have more than two unbuffered DIMMs (but note that several reviewers have found that four unbuffered DIMMs can be used providing they are of good quality and identical type). This is a limitation of the AMD chipset and not ABIT and it is not something that can be changed by a future BIOS release. Registered DIMMs cost approximately $10 more than unbuffered DIMMs for a 256MB module. If you intend to use more than two sticks of memory then make sure that all your memory is registered!! Note also that the memory bus is synchronous, meaning that it runs at the same speed as the front side bus (FSB). This means you must use PC1600 RAM with 200MHz DDR FSB processors and PC2100 RAM with 266MHz DDR FSB processors.

The maximum DDR memory support is about 3.5GB rather than 4GB. This limitation is caused by the PC architecture in which the missing 0.5GB of memory is due to addresses being reserved for PCI I/O space, AGP aperture mapping space and other onboard device I/O space. This limitation applies to all current motherboards and is due to the fact that 32-bit processors can only address a total of 4GB of memory.

ECC memory is fully supported.

You can use 4 unbuffered DIMM sticks on the board but they can't be more than 128MB each (512MB total).

Up to two unbuffered DIMMs (up to 1GB each) of DDR RAM

Never seen it happen.


Why do I know this? Because I HAD a KG7.