falsely recognized ram?

[imported_brandan]

i currently have a 128mb stick of generic ram, and a 64mb stick of hyundai, or something along those lines. the two have worked fine in multiple motherboards for a couple of years now (around 3). my girlfriend's stepdad had a couple of 256mb sticks laying around, so i figured i'd try them out. when i put them in (either or both, or one with the other two stick) they are recognized as 32mb.

i did some searching and noticed that on some asus boards anything greater than or equal to 256mb that isn't 'registered' will not work. i'm not quite sure what the difference between registered and unregistered ram is (i'm guessing name brand vs. generic), but i do know that this ram isn't working.

i am using a gigabyte ga-7zxe motherboard. it should support this ram (according to the specifications). is there anything that i may be doing incorrectly? cpu-z and the microsoft memory checking tool both recognize the sticks as 32mb, as well.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Chips on both sides of the stick? Some older mbs don't know how to handle high density ram.

 

[imported_brandan]

yeah, but the 128mb stick i have also uses chips on both side of the stick.

 

[Zap]

Actual physical layout can be different from electrical layout.

The problem is that newer RAM uses higher density chips while older motherboards don't recognize the higher density chips, thus either reporting a smaller size (usually ½ or ¼) or not working at all.

 

[Peter]

What's the chipset on the mainboard, and what chips (and how many of them) are on these DIMMs?

 

[imported_brandan]

apollo kt133a
vt8363a memory/agp/pci controller (pac)
vt82c686b pci super-i/o integrated periferal controller (psipc)

on both sticks there are 16 (each). i don't really know much about ram, so i'm not quite sure what you mean by 'what chips' (the downside to having used the same two sticks for the past 3 years).

on a sticker (on both sticks) it says '4x64', and on one sticker it says 'sd 32m' (i assume because there are 16 chips in total).

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: brandanon one sticker it says 'sd 32m'

Maybe they really are 32MB sticks?

 

[imported_brandan]

double sided 4x64 32MB sticks?!

 

[Peter]

64x4 technology is beyond reach for the KT133A. You'll need to stick with 32x8 or smaller SDRAM technology.

 

[imported_brandan]

ok, great, thanks.

 

[Peter]

Note that this means you can use 512 MB DIMMs very well - they just need to have 16 chips of 32x8 technology, not 64x4.

 

[imported_brandan]

duly noted!