Paul
Tue Jun 17 02:36:35 PDT 2008
attilathehun1 wrote:
> I was going to post this reply earlier but I wanted it to come up on the
> date of the 17th, so I could distinguish it from other replies.
> Since we've come to a road block or an obstruction to progress maybe you
> could answer this new question.
> I'm on newegg.com online right now trying to buy some RAM sticks for this
> new motherboard that I bought about a month ago. There were some bad reviews
> about this mobo, it's a model Elitegroup GF6100-M754. One review was by a PC
> tech that said 2 out of 3 customers returned it. Another one was by a dude
> that said the DDR 400 RAM stick that was thrown in free, made by Kingston,
> was not compatible with the mobo, but as soon as he replaced it with another
> RAM stick it was fine. Another review was about a dude who said ATI video
> cards don't work with this mobo/CPU combo. Now since I've learned about
> downloading the correct drivers for the chipset, for example, on my Intel for
> the ATI card. Probably these people that were having problems didn't have an
> Intel chipset and used an ATI video card and didn't download any driver for
> non-Intel chipset based motherboards.
> The other problem with the included Kingston DDR 400 512 mb RAM stick is
> because I noticed, on a 8" x 4" piece of paper that was inserted in the
> package, an addendum that said, " Users please note that the memory
> controller of this motherboard stably supports DDR memory DIMM frequencies of
> 333/266/200 rather than 400/333/266/200". You see the absence of the 400
> there of what's supported. Right, you include a DDR 400 stick and the mobo
> doesn't support it.
> So, now I've come to the conclusion that maybe this wasn't a waste of money
> and the reviews were by people that weren't educated to the facts. Thanks to
> you, I've been upgraded to a 3 on the 1 to 5 scale of expertise. LOL
> Look, back to the question at hand. I'm looking at these RAM sticks and DDR
> 333 with 184 pins is what I need for this mobo. Some stick say ECC-no and
> others yes, most say Heat Spreader-no and 1 so far has said yes to heat
> spreader. The one that says yes to heat spreader is a bit more expensive.
> Then there are voltages that say 2.5 mostly but 1 says 2.6 volts. Ok, I have
> 3 here that I blued and copied and pasted onto Microsoft word. All have heat
> spreaders, all are non-ecc. I just noticed that they are all Kingstons.
> Anyways, I guess I'm going to buy 2 sticks and put 1 GB of DDR 333 RAM into
> this mobo and get this living room PC working again.
> Ok, it's getting late and I gotta walk the dog and get up early to play the
> stock market. Lost $1100 yesterday morning only because my screaming to get
> out had no effect on my brother when we were down only $330 dollars. When the
> stock market opened at 6:30 am on the west coast my PC was just getting the
> drivers loaded up for the new ATI card. I had to install the video card at
> 6:20 am because at 4 am I broke off the plastic piece that releases the video
> card on my Dell 8300 mobo. I crazy glued it and 10 minutes later it was still
> sticky. I used some generic crazy glue because I couldn't find the original
> crazy glue.
> Ok, lets get onto this walk.
> Thanks, attilathehun1
>
This sounds like a new topic, and not a continuation of the original discussion.
There is a high volume group, alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, where you
could post the non-WinXP related questions (such as this question about selecting
RAM). There are even free news servers, to gain access to groups like that,
such as news.aioe.org (no registration needed, limited text posts per day)
or news.motzarella.org (registration with an email address needed). I use
mozilla.org Thunderbird, as a program to post to those free NNTP news servers.
Faster RAM can be used in a slower application. A DDR400 stick will work in a
DDR333 motherboard, so that is not a problem. The BIOS will read the SPD chip
on the DIMM and get the correct value for CAS and the other timings. A DDR400
stick will even run at DDR200, if you want it to.
When buying motherboards, you want ones where the BIOS has a screen for
setting the RAM timing. If something isn't quite right, the computer
is crashing and so on, you can use the RAM timings or the Vdimm setting,
to attempt to correct the problem. Personally, I would only
buy different RAM, if I had proved the stuff I just got, had
a bad spot or looked like it would never work. You could certainly
do a lot of testing with the 512MB stick, before going shopping
again.
You can download the manual, and check the BIOS screens, before you
buy the board. And that way, there are fewer surprises. Some boards
are notorious for having a lack of BIOS settings, to tune them up.
In this one, there are RAM timing options, but no picture in the
manual of what they are.
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?CategoryID=1&TypeID=22&DetailID=854&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=7&LanID=0
The S754 processors, have the memory controller inside the processor.
Which means the characteristics are a part of the processor, and to
a lesser extent, a function of the motherboard. Yes, the BIOS can
bugger things up, but in terms of predicting what is possible, looking
at other S754 motherboards can also be instructive.
For example, see PDF page 21, Table 1 of this manual, for some RAM
population rules for S754. It shows, like in row 18 of the table,
that two sticks at DDR400 are possible. Since your board only has
two slots, it is like you have "slot 1" and "slot 3". So have a look
in the BIOS, and see what settings they offer.
http://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock754/k8v_basic/e1529_k8v.pdf
A lot of AGP chipsets will work with different brands of AGP video cards.
It doesn't necessarily mean using an Nvidia video card with an Nvidia chipset
and so on. And every company makes the odd mistake they'd
rather forget (like some problem with Nvidia NF3 chipset and
6800 series video cards, and stuttering in games).
Paul
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