Need help ID'ing ram stick I have

Semi short story first. I have an Asus P4S800 MB, P4 2.4 533 cpu, MSI FX5200 128meg video card, SB sound card, win 98se and win xp 2nd ed (duel Boot). My son has 99 percent identical system except the video card, his cpu is a 400mzh one and win xp. I did have his same video card, an eVGA MX4000 64meg. I did a hard drive copy of his drive onto a new drive for me. Installed a few other things, uninstalled some stuff he had. The windows xp part was put on my comp just a week ago so this really dosnt play a part I dont think.

Things ran pretty good then a few thnings were going wrong. Games mostly, were crashing. Tried updated vid drivers, lost ability to run a few games after that. Reverted back to old drivers, fixed a few things, messed up a few more. His comp runs SUPER yet mine is givin me the problems.

RAM.. His is NOT the same. I have 3 sticks of 256megs. Two of them I have been using: Vdata brand ddr 2700. I also have one ddr 3200. This is the one I need to find out who caries it cause I forgot where I got it from. Its PH ddr400. The PH is the brand but I cant find any info on it.

I put this into my comp tonight, and had no problems with it. I put one of the Vdata sticks in and problems came up. Im going to put the other Vdata in and try it but I guess my big question is, can ram have this much effect on games and how often is it bad when u buy it? Ive never had problems with ram like pc 133 or pc100 in the past comps ive had.

Sorry for makin a long story out of a short one!

 

Hi Basstracker,

SiSoftware Sandra in my signature may give you some information. On my computer it will even read the RAM module manufacter. Look under "Motherboard Information" there are a few different sections.

If you cannot get the same brand, I suggest you get a "named" brand and try to match as close as possible. Some off the top of my head are Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, Kingmax and Hyundai. There should be specifications at the website. From what the people have said in other posts, it would be important to match the CAS latency. Your motherboard manufacturer may specifiy ECC or non-ECC (and I don't know if this relates to buffered or non-buffered).

I did some research at one stage, but it went in one eye and out the other

Asus mobos can be fussy about RAM and some RAM can confict with others (or "confuse" the motherboard).

If you get the RAM situation working, you could then tackle the "drivers" problem. You may need to completely remove all the current drivers then install again. Safe Mode, remove the drivers, set the display to "Standard Graphics Adapter ", back to normal Windows and run the driver installation. I also suggest that you reinstall or upgrade DirectX.

Matt