Ddram

I have an Athlon 1.4 on a 8K7A Motherboard. This when installed had one 256MB DDRAM memory stick and worked OK. Later, I fitted another 256 MB stich when the trouble started! It crashed every few minutes. Remove either stick and all was OK, but with both in place the machine was completly unstable. I upgraded the bios and installed the latest motherboard drivers, and this has improved things considerably, but I still get crashes, usually when something memory intensive is being run.

Epox said: "It may be that your instabilities are caused from conflicts between the two installed sticks of memory and their SPD data. Please do ensure the use of identical memories in both sockets for maximum stability. Please also only use Normal system timings when using multiplie dims. "

I then asked if I had to throw one stick away, but they did not reply!

Is conflict between DDRAM sticks a known problem? Can anyone make any suggestions please?

 

Yes DDRAM comes in different flavors, and ensuring that your sticks match is important. If you have two sticks that do not match, and you're only having system problems with them both installed, I would suggest only having one installed. If you need a full 512MB, see if you can trade in your new stick for a matching one. I am sure there is a way to identify what is already in your system. I believe your BIOS should be able to tell you. Look for something like PC2100. Somebody more knowledgeable in identifying and classifying memory sticks can take it from here. If they won't let you trade it in, sell it. People always want to buy memory. I was going to start shopping myself.

 

Thanks in fact they are both 2100, but of different makes! It seems that it is that sensitive.

 

What brands are they? I am going to buy a chip soon, and I was considering Crucial.

 

Hi rutland,
The one parameter I don't see listed, that may be a cause of your trouble, is timing settings. SPD (serial presence detect) tells the bios how to set the timing for a given memory module. "If" the bios is using the timings of one module (via SPD) and those timings happen to be too aggresive for the second module, there in could lie your problem.
You could download Sisoft Sandra (it's free) and run it with only one memory module at a time installed. Using the "Mainboard Information" section, you would be able to determine the timings of each module. If they happen to differ, you could then access bios and manually set timings to work with the slower module.

Tin