Weird problems with PC133 RAM

[netdude]

Hi, i have a 256 meg stick of MT (Micron) PC133 RAM and it runs great. I added a really good stick of PC100@133 RAM and all is well for a total of 384 megs, no problems. Well, i said why half ass it and use a PC100 stick @ 133 when i could just go buy another 256 meg stick of MT (Micron) PC133 RAM and get myself up to 512 megs of PC133 RAM. When i took my 128 meg PC100 out and put the new second 256 meg stick of PC133 everything was fine until i ran a Quake III demo, my FPS dropped by 20 FPS. I took a big FPS loss in 3DMark200 as well. I was getting 86 FPS in quake III with my 256 meg stick of PC133 and my 128 meg stick of PC100@133. With two exact 256 meg sticks of PC133 RAM i get 66 FPS..?? I took the second new 256 meg stick out and put the 128 meg PC100 back in and boom my FPS is back up to 86 FPS(1024x768). Now i'm thinking it has to be bad ram, i get a NEW stick and try again and the same performance hit happens again. Why would would it do this when i'm using the exact brand and type for both sticks? I have a Asus A7PRO mobo and i have no idea why this is happening, i checked the BIOS and all of the settings are unchanged. If anybody here want's to take a crack at this be my guest because i have no idea why i would get such a performance hit. Thanks in advance, Al

 

[shiznut123]

Are you using win2k? I heard that too much ram can really degrade performance. I don't know if thats true or not.

 

[netdude]

No sorry i didn't say i'm using Windows ME. Is it a ME problem you think? I know it's not the mobo or that DIMM slot because then nothing would work right in there right??

 

[shiznut123]

Well WindowsMe can't handle that much ram right. Win2k will most likely make it stable.

 

[netdude]

By the way, i did try arranging the sticks in every combination i could think of with three DIMM slots. If i stick with 384 megs (256 + 128) everything is fine. As soon as i add that other 256 meg stick in ANY slot i get a hit.

 

[netdude]

I think what i will do is return this stick and get two 128 meg stick of PC133 install one of them and run that for now until i can figure this garbage out.

 

[smp]

I don't know how MORE ram can degrade performance, but I did hear a rumour about too much ram being more than the board can handle.. but I don't know about that.. I think your board can take up to 1.5 gig right? Hmm... sorry man. You haven't played with the cas settings? is it 2 or 3??? and ras and ras to cas?? 2 or 3? maybe you can play with that to get better performance? Or maybe that stick of ram might be flakey?? Take it back for another.. I just did a similar thing as you.. I bought another 256 meg stick of micron garaunteed to run 142mhz at cas2.. guess what? it didn't even do 133 @ cas 2.. so maybe micron sucks.??? My original stick is micron and it will do cas 2.. I don't know.. sh!t is weird.

 

[netdude]

I let the board auto adjust the CAS settings for now they're all at 3-3-3.

 

[netdude]

Yes mu board can handle 1.5 gig of memory how it runs it is another story it seems, LOL.

 

[netdude]

By the way i wouldn't see a 20 FPS loss from CAS 2 to 3 i don't think, i have played with the settings before and i didn't see much of a difference in FPS between them to be honest.

 

[esung]

I'm just guessing here, since I don't have much information on your hardware. Have you tried to limit the amount of file cache WinME can use? Although It shouldn't cause problem at 512MB, it'll cause problem above 512MB if you are running Win9x. try to force the max at 512MB or lower. you can do that in system.ini. Under [vache] add the line MaxFileCache=xxxxxx where xxxxxx is the maxmimum amount of physical memory you want the OS to utilize for file cache, and the measurement is in Kilobytes.

Also, how big is your AGP aperture size set in BIOS?

 

[netdude]

My aperture size is 256 megs. As for the other stuff i haven't played with it to be honest. I do have my swap file(virtual memory) set to a min of 200 and a max of 200, but i don't see how this would effect things here. I know you're talking about though it's in msconfig, what does 512 mb break down to in kb? Dumb question, i know but i'm tired and annoyed right now.