Can ABIT KT7A really use 1.5 gigs of memory?

Demokin

Junior Member
Nov 11, 2002
6
0
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Has anyone in this forum run an abit kt7a with more than a gig of ram and using the third memory slot?

My friend and I both have the KT7A and are running KT7A9 bios. We both use VMWARE to test new products for work, and so we need a lot of memory so we can simulate clusters and other server apps (Exchange/SharePoint Portal Server/Etc.). I started out with a 512mb stick of memory, then got another 256mb for a total of 768mb in TWO slots. My friend had two 512mb sticks and a 256mb stick in his THIRD slot. When he did this he had also upgraded to the GeForce 4ti video card. He was getting random reboots, and had a very unstable system. He finally removed the 256mb stick from the third slot and his system was stable.

This past week I got my 512mb stick. I was running 512mb in all 3 slots. XP seems fine, 2k seems fine, advance server seems fine. However, when I was in win2k (gaming os) and tried to play DAoC (Dark Ages of Camelot) the computer locked up. I immediately suspected the memory and thought I had a bad stick. So I took out the 512 and put in a 256mb stick instead. Loaded 2k, loaded DAoC..Same issue, hung on loading. I thought it might just be DAoC. So I tried Battlefield 1942, that crashed too.

Anyway, to make a long story short I ended up keeping the two 512mb sticks in slot 1 and 2. The third slot is being naughty. I will do another test where I run less than a gig of memory, but spread across all three slots. This will test if its a bad slot or a limitation of the MB. I want to test to see if this damn motherboard can really run 1.5 gigs of memory and stay stable, or if they LIED! There are a few ways to test memory, and booting to the OS isn't really one of them:

1) Load Adobe Photoshop and config it to take up as much extra memory as possible. When it hits bad sector it will crash something. ;o)
2) Play any high end video game and watch the magic or Dr.Watson!

My Specs:
ABIT KT7A (LATEST BIOS)
1.5 gigs of PC133 Infineon memory
AMD 1.4 (133/266) Athlon
Gainward GeFORCE3 PowerPack!!! Ti/450 w/ 128mb of mem
Maxtor 80 gig ATA133 hard drive
IBM 30 gig Deskstar ATA133 hard drive
Belkin 2.0 USB xpansion card
Asus 40x CD-Rom
Creative 12x DVD Drive
Yamaha external CDR Burner
Fans GALORE
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
6
81
Try changing memory timing? Anandtech usually end up with less aggressive timings with all banks full, maybe you should experiment with doing that if you haven't already.
 

EKAtBzboyz

Senior member
Nov 1, 2002
323
0
0
try using slots 2 and 3 and skip 1 alltogether
then 1 and 3

ive heard of some boards being unstable with all dimm slots being used.....kinda sucks if its true for you as well

try memtest86 as well
 

Demokin

Junior Member
Nov 11, 2002
6
0
0
Well luckily someone in the abit mobo newsgroups gave me the answer:

Set 'Delay DRAM Read Latch' to 'No Delay' in your BIOS