using all 4 dimm slots

[soumenbanerjee]

I am in the process of assembling a PC. I have bought 4 X 512 MB kingston value ram. I have a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 SLI Mobo. This has 4 DIMMs and is upgradable to 4 GB. I was told by some of my colleagues that in many instances ocupying all the 4 dimms would not work. Can someone please throw some light on this please:frown:

 

[tbike06]

It should work, it just might run at a slower speed.

 

[TheRyuu]

I think you would have to decrease the command rate to 2T, and MABY the mobo might back down to 166mhz on the ram, but you should be able to put that back up to 200mhz.

 

[F1shF4t]

u will have to run at T2 command rate, which wont change much in performance.
Also usually u will be able to set the speed back to 200 for the ram, but like in my case you might be only able to run the ram at 180mhz, in that case just tighten the timings and there will be no performance drop.

 

[alex123]

Yeah, you will have to run it at "2T Command Rate".

This is not a Mobo issue, I think that this is AMD CPU issue. Memory controller is inside the AMD CPU and it looks like for 4 DIMMs you have to use "2T Command Rate" setting, regardless of the motherboard you use.

Another thing, if your DIMMs are double-sided (chips are on the both sides of the DIMM module), then your Mobo would drop a memory clock speed from 200 to 166 MHz.

Do not warry about that either. Your VALUE RAM would only go to no more then 220 MHz, so if you overclock, you would have to drop memory to 166 MHz anyways. Let me explain a bit more... I also have an MSI K8NGM2-FID board, and I have a value RAM which would not go further then 215-220 MHz. So in the BIOS, I dropped memory clock from 200 MHz to 166 MHz, but I also increased the BUS SPEED from 200 to 250 MHz, that gives 25% overclok for my 2 GHz X2 3800. And (!!!) that also gives 25% overclock to 166 MHz memory as well!

So after my overclok I have CPU-Z showing my CPU running at 2.5 GHz and my memory running at 208 MHz (which is perfect for my value RAM, cause it would not go too much further than that)

So if you will be dropped to 166 MHz by your Mobo, do not warry, just give it 25% overclock and your memory would go to 208 MHz

 

[funkymatt]

it's not a processor issue. the nforce 4 chipset is notorious for not liking 4 banks of ram and tht MSI board does not overclock very well using that chipset. It should work if you're using ddr 333 memory (pc2700)

 

[DrMrLordX]

How is it a chipset issue? The memory controller is on the CPU, not the motherboard chipset.

 

[aka1nas]

What CPU core are you using? The newer ones can at least at DDR400 speeds with 4 sticks. Regardless, you will need to run at a 2T command rate.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
How is it a chipset issue? The memory controller is on the CPU, not the motherboard chipset.

Well by that logic (which should be logically correct) i will have the same result on all boards, but on my asus A8v deluxe i was able to run 4 sticks of ram up to 208 mhz rock stable, while with the dfi ultra d, my system becoumes unstable after 192 mhz on ram.

That was with single core. With dually anything above 186mhz is unstable. So its not a cpu issue its the board issue.

EDIT: x2 is manchester, and the single core is venice E3

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: alex123

Yeah, you will have to run it at "2T Command Rate".

This is not a Mobo issue, I think that this is AMD CPU issue. Memory controller is inside the AMD CPU and it looks like for 4 DIMMs you have to use "2T Command Rate" setting, regardless of the motherboard you use.

Another thing, if your DIMMs are double-sided (chips are on the both sides of the DIMM module), then your Mobo would drop a memory clock speed from 200 to 166 MHz.

Do not warry about that either. Your VALUE RAM would only go to no more then 220 MHz, so if you overclock, you would have to drop memory to 166 MHz anyways. Let me explain a bit more... I also have an MSI K8NGM2-FID board, and I have a value RAM which would not go further then 215-220 MHz. So in the BIOS, I dropped memory clock from 200 MHz to 166 MHz, but I also increased the BUS SPEED from 200 to 250 MHz, that gives 25% overclok for my 2 GHz X2 3800. And (!!!) that also gives 25% overclock to 166 MHz memory as well!

So after my overclok I have CPU-Z showing my CPU running at 2.5 GHz and my memory running at 208 MHz (which is perfect for my value RAM, cause it would not go too much further than that)

So if you will be dropped to 166 MHz by your Mobo, do not warry, just give it 25% overclock and your memory would go to 208 MHz

I used exactly the same settings for my single core on my asus A8V deluxe ages ago, 4 ram sticks, 2 double sided and 2 single sided, 2.5ghz 208mhz ram, although here is the funny bit, on my asus a8v the divider was 3:2 it was supposed to be 166 LOL
And if i used any other divider the ram speed would change when using cool and quite, that board was seriously weird.

 

[TheRyuu]

The only mobo's I think that can run 4 dimms at 1T command rate are the ATI NB's. For some reason they can OC a lot on the Hypertransport as well.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake

Well by that logic (which should be logically correct) i will have the same result on all boards, but on my asus A8v deluxe i was able to run 4 sticks of ram up to 208 mhz rock stable, while with the dfi ultra d, my system becoumes unstable after 192 mhz on ram.

That was with single core. With dually anything above 186mhz is unstable. So its not a cpu issue its the board issue.

That seems more plausible. It could easily be a motherboard issue, but it can't be a chipset issue. My guess is that the Athlon 64's memory issues on different boards has something to do with trace lengths/physical location of DIMM slots and other possible factors not related to the motherboard chipset itself.

 

[aka1nas]

As far as what the RAM speed is auto-detected as, that is largely BIOS related if you are running a chip that can handle 4 sticks @ 200Mhz.