Not all RAM is seen

Hi all,

I have a Gigabyte GA-6WMM7 in a Packard Bell PC. It had 256MB of RAM in
2x128MB sticks. I upgraded as per advised by both Crucial, Kingston and a
Colleague to 512, with 2x256MB Kingston PC133 Sticks, but only 128MB per
stick is recognized. Am I missing something? The PC is running Windows
2003 Standard as it was intended (and still is) to use it as a Server.

Thanks,

Neil

PS - Any more info needed, just ask.

Hi

"Neil Barras" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I have a Gigabyte GA-6WMM7 in a Packard Bell PC. It had 256MB of RAM
in 2x128MB sticks. I upgraded as per advised by both Crucial,
Kingston and a Colleague to 512, with 2x256MB Kingston PC133 Sticks,
but only 128MB per stick is recognized. Am I missing something? The
PC is running Windows 2003 Standard as it was intended (and still is)
to use it as a Server.

Thanks,

Neil

PS - Any more info needed, just ask.


I inherited one of these boards (very stable), it had 256 Mb PC133 in
slot 2 to which I added 128 Mb of PC100 (which I had spare, generic?) in
slot 1 and it works fine. Belarc shows BIOS as 3.0C.

Regards

Steve

Neil Barras wrote:
I have a Gigabyte GA-6WMM7 in a Packard Bell PC. It had 256MB of RAM
in 2x128MB sticks. I upgraded as per advised by both Crucial,
Kingston and a Colleague to 512, with 2x256MB Kingston PC133 Sticks,
but only 128MB per stick is recognized. Am I missing something? The
PC is running Windows 2003 Standard as it was intended (and still is)
to use it as a Server.

The i810E chipset requires 32Mx4 DRAM. You probably bought16Mx8 or
32Mx8 - the memory chips are being treated as though they were 16Mx4 or
32Mx4 and half the RAM is ignored.

It is my observation that many of the configurators are wrong nowadays
when looking for PC100 memory. RMA the sticks.

The i810E chipset requires 32Mx4 DRAM. You probably bought16Mx8 or
32Mx8 - the memory chips are being treated as though they were 16Mx4 or
32Mx4 and half the RAM is ignored.

It is my observation that many of the configurators are wrong nowadays
when looking for PC100 memory. RMA the sticks.



By that, do you mean that I need double sided RAM? The sticks I have at the
moment are single

Cheers,

Neil

Neil Barras wrote:
The i810E chipset requires 32Mx4 DRAM. You probably bought16Mx8 or
32Mx8 - the memory chips are being treated as though they were
16Mx4 or 32Mx4 and half the RAM is ignored.

It is my observation that many of the configurators are wrong
nowadays when looking for PC100 memory. RMA the sticks.

By that, do you mean that I need double sided RAM? The sticks I have
at the moment are single

The right sticks will have 8 32Mx4 chips on each side. For the Intel
440LX, 440BX, 440GX, 810, 810e, 820 and 840 Boards you need PC100 SDRAM
3.3V, No Buffer, Non-registered, Non-ECC DIMMs . For 810 and 810e boards
256MB modules should be non-registered. Do not mix registered and
non-registered modules.

There is a lot of this generic memory around, so don't overpay for it.

Hi

"Steve Smith" wrote in message
...
Hi

"Neil Barras" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I have a Gigabyte GA-6WMM7 in a Packard Bell PC. It had 256MB of RAM
in 2x128MB sticks. I upgraded as per advised by both Crucial,
Kingston and a Colleague to 512, with 2x256MB Kingston PC133 Sticks,
but only 128MB per stick is recognized. Am I missing something? The
PC is running Windows 2003 Standard as it was intended (and still is)
to use it as a Server.

Thanks,

Neil

PS - Any more info needed, just ask.


I inherited one of these boards (very stable), it had 256 Mb PC133 in
slot 2 to which I added 128 Mb of PC100 (which I had spare, generic?)
in slot 1 and it works fine. Belarc shows BIOS as 3.0C.

Regards

Steve



PS. Both sticks are double sided, 8 chips per side. PC133 is Magic-Pro
(Soltek?).

Steve

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 19:25:31 +0100, Neil Barras
wrote:

Hi all,

I have a Gigabyte GA-6WMM7 in a Packard Bell PC. It had 256MB of RAM in
2x128MB sticks. I upgraded as per advised by both Crucial, Kingston and
a
Colleague to 512, with 2x256MB Kingston PC133 Sticks, but only 128MB per
stick is recognized. Am I missing something? The PC is running Windows
2003 Standard as it was intended (and still is) to use it as a Server.

Thanks,

Neil

PS - Any more info needed, just ask.



The 6WMM7 used in PB machines was hacked about by PB. I've had issues with
it in the past trying to fit CPU upgrades etc. Some jumpers are soldered
and differ from the Gigabyte retail board. When you specify the board
model for updates you cannot be cartain that what's good for the retail
board is good for the PB board. There were are also two revisions of the
MM7. One thing that you can do which may help is flash a Gigabyte BIOS
over the PB one. This will give you control over memory settings, which
the PB BIOS does not. Use the standard Award flash utility to do this, you
can sownlaod it from Gigabyte with the BIOS file. I've completed this
procedure successfully in the past.

Best, Ian.

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