Asus P3B-F and memory incompatibility

[TheWhooligan]

Yesterday I was at Best Buy and decided to pick up a 256MB stick of PC133. I am only running a PIII 450, but I decided to get PC 133 for future upgrade possibilities. I was under the impression that PC 133 was backwards compatible and would run at 100MHz just as PC 100 can be run at 66MHz.

Upon returning home, I installed the new memory. For the first boot I cleared all the other memory slots. When the machine POSTs though, the memory only reads to 128. After trying all 4 memory slots, I concluded that either the memory was faulty or somebody had bought the memory and switched the stickers with another stick and then returned it. So I headed back over to Best Buy and exchanged it for another stick of the same memory. When I finally got home last night, I installed it with the same problem occuring.

I must now conclude that the problem is not with the memory but with the motherboard or the combo of the motherboard/memory.

I have upgraded the P3B-F to the latest non-beta BIOS to no effect. Other than that, I am stumped on troubleshooting steps to take to get it to work. So I turn to you all in hopes of finding a solution

Parts involved;
Asus P3B-F mainboard w/ rev. 1006 BIOS
Reptron K-Byte 32x64 256MB PC133 SDRAM module

If anybody has any suggestions I would appreciate it.

-Daniel

 

[TheWhooligan]

The only other thing of notable mention might be that in the manual it says at the time of production the only 256MB memory in existance was double sided. The stick I have is single sided, however, the manual does not mention that single sided may encounter problems.

 

[mastertech01]

It would appear the mobo doesnt support single sided ram at 256MB. I was prolly only supported to 128MB per bank. You may want to see if they will swap for double sided ram for you.

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: mastertech01
It would appear the mobo doesnt support single sided ram at 256MB. I was prolly only supported to 128MB per bank. You may want to see if they will swap for double sided ram for you.

Well, AT FAQ tells that the BX chipset is incompatible with high density RAM such as your stick is, it's pretty strange that it even posted, it shouldn't have, I believe. The problem may be with RAM brand also. That ASUS moboard doesn't like Kingmax and Winbond memory, AFAIK, maybe your stick has a similar problem. But then again, it wouldn't post then at all. I also suggest exchanging it for a double sided 256MB stick. Good luck!

 

[TheWhooligan]

thanks gents. looks like I'm heading back to best buy