PC2700 PC3200 Incompatibility?

[vicjm]

Hi everyone. I've got a memory issue, and I hope that someone might have an idea of what to try next since I'm out of ideas.

I have an older system with a Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra mobo and a P4 2.0 processor. Until a few months ago, I had 2 sticks of 512MB PC2700 RAM. I gave one of those sticks to my sister, and since then I've been on the lookout for another 512MB. I recently got a good deal on a 512MB stick of Corsair PC3200, and I tried to install it today. It was my understanding that the 3200 stuff would just run at 2700 speeds which really wasn't a big deal to me.

Unfortunately, no matter what I did my system would only recognize 512MB total. I tried with each stick (old and new) individually, and each worked perfectly. But when I put both in, I still only find 512. Changing the slot into which each stick was placed didn't change anything. I even ran Memtest86+, which I'd never done before, and there was no difference. I can't find any relevant settings in the bios, and I'm a little reluctant to muck around too much with voltages unless there is a significant possibility that that could be the problem.

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions, I would love to hear them. Thanks.

 

[BladeVenom]

Have you tried loosening the timing?

 

[myocardia]

You're going to have to get rid of "by SPD" values, and set your timings to what the slowest stick (timing-wise, not Mhz-wise) uses, then lock it at 166 Mhz. That way, neither stick will be trying to operate out of their comfort zone.