Stick of 512MB DDR only showing up as 256

[VidarJMD]

As I was messing with a system monitor program (Coolmon) I noticed that it was listing my total ram as only 256 which I thought was strange since I know I just bought a stick of 512 to include in my new system and I know Windows was reporting 512 when I first started using it.

But lo and behold everything from System properties to dxdiag is saying I have 256MB of ram. I just bought this stick from crucial and is being used in an Abit AT7 Max board. 512DDR 2100. Is there something I messed up somewhere that would make it do that? Is it just saying I have 256 or has my 512 been turned into a 256? Bios setting? What would cause this to happen?

 

[John]

Switch dimm slots and see what happens.

 

[joeryu]

i agree, try switching the ram slots.

 

[Insane3D]

I had a 256mb stick of Crucial all of a sudden start registering as 128mb. I tried it in different slots and different mobo's and it was always the same thing. It was like one side of the memory just stopped working, but the other side was fine. I had no other memory problems, and all was well besides half of the stick missing of course. I RMA'ed to Crucial, and they said it happens sometimes. It had to do with some component on the PCB just giving up the ghost.

 

[VidarJMD]

Well, I somehow forgot that I had 2 sticks of 256. Regardless, it was still only registering 1 so I switched both of them to slots 3 and 4 (instead of 1 and 2) and that seems to be working. Thanks guys.

 

[corkyg]

Check your Abit mobo manual to verify what the max RAM each slot can read. I didn't do that and found out that My Asus K7M slots will only read 256. I put in a 512 and it read as 256. That is why I now have 784 MB in my system.

 

[ElFenix]

i had one crucial that would sometimes show up as 128 and sometimes as 256. i returned that one.