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RAM grief on my old computer

G

Glib

Member
So I have this dinosaur that I built 5 years ago, and World of Warcraft made it obvious to me that I needed more RAM:
1.3Ghz AMD
ASUS A7M266 motherboard - onboard sound
256mb DDR RAM (266 mhz)
GeForce4 Ti 4200 vid card - recently upgraded
80gb WD hd

So I doubled my RAM - I went to a local shop and they offered a 512mb chip (266 mhz). I installed it in RAM slot 1, moving the 256mb chip to RAM slot 2. Computer recognized the new RAM size of 768, booted and ran fine - until I started the game. Game runs ok for 20-30 seconds, then the computer crashes. Computer does everything else fine with 768mb in it so my take was bad RAM chip.
Traded the 512mb RAM for the only available replacement, a 512mb stick of 333mhz RAM. Same symptom. Now I try running with the 512mb stick only, and the computer runs apps and game. Either RAM chip works fine separately.
So my take on this is that both RAM chips are fine, but my RAM slot #2 is crap. A friend suggested I get 2 identical RAM chips (size, speed, manufacturer) and try that out. What do you think?
 
Have you updated the BIOS? You may have to manually adjust the timings in the BIOS to run both PC2100 and PC2700 or just get another PC2700 module.
 
Originally posted by: CrucialLabs
Have you updated the BIOS? You may have to manually adjust the timings in the BIOS to run both PC2100 and PC2700 or just get another PC2700 module.
Click to expand...

My guess as well,
one chips is pc2100 other is pc2700.

When it tries to run the pc2100 at pc2700 speeds it blows up.

So as CrucialLabs says,
Either
1: Manuall adjust the ram in the bios to both run at pc2100(ddr266) or buy another chip of pc2700.
2: Try putting the 256 in the first bank and the 512 in the second incase this will automatically set the clock at 266(pc2100)
 
Yes. That's a simple fix. Check that it's not pushing that 2100 dimm (probably pretty basic memory to begin with) to 2700 speeds. That can very easily cause instability especially under stress.
 
Try each mem alone in the second slot to test the slot. If there are other slots, try them in slots 2/3 and 3/4.


Jim
 
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