Mixed memory...can this cause problems?

X-Nemesis · Post by **X-Nemesis** » Tue May 10, 2005 4:50 pm

My dad's machine has been consistantly going out on him for the past while every 2-3 months, twice in the past 3 weeks including today. The harddrive is new and he's running winxp on an athlon 1800. He has a gig of memory but it's divided into 3 sticks....one 512, and two 256's, and all three sticks are of different makes. So can this possibly be the reason for his system going down, and in that I mean windows either going black on bootup or going black with a prompt indicating some missing file which has happened more than once.

Cheers

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue May 10, 2005 5:41 pm

The symptoms don't make me think RAM.

Things ideal, you want the same exact RAM across the board. But on paper, mixing brands and sizes of RAM is supposed to work most of the time without issues. Of course you run into the oddball time where one brand of RAM won't get along with another brand, or perhaps one of those sticks on the board isn't certified guaranteed compatible with that exact motherboard.

That's why I always say "Get RAM 100% guaranteed compatible with your motherboard". You can't just grab any old stick that seems it should work just because it's the right speed.

Dumpes to C prompt saying missing file? I'm thinking still hard drive issues, perhaps bad ribbon cable, or failing power supply.

X-Nemesis · Post by **X-Nemesis** » Tue May 10, 2005 5:43 pm

Thanks for the reply YOSC....how do I test the power supply to check out it's status?

JawZ · Post by **JawZ** » Tue May 10, 2005 5:44 pm

X-Nemesis wrote:My dad's machine has been consistantly going out on him for the past while every 2-3 months, twice in the past 3 weeks including today. The harddrive is new and he's running winxp on an athlon 1800. He has a gig of memory but it's divided into 3 sticks....one 512, and two 256's, and all three sticks are of different makes. So can this possibly be the reason for his system going down, and in that I mean windows either going black on bootup or going black with a prompt indicating some missing file which has happened more than once.

Cheers

Absolutely....it could. Or it could not. But more than likely, yes.

Easiest thing for you to do is lookup his motherboard and find out what memory is certified or compatible with it. Mixing different ram modules can be tricky if their SPD values have not been programmed alike. Some might be running at lower latencies while the others might be programmed to run higher....also, RAM does need a certain voltage to run....different modules might be trying to feed off of one static current thus starving or overpowering the other modules.

List the mobo here along with it's BIOS revision number and we'll help you see what is up.

Easy fix....get all the same modules from one manufacturer that are certified in your mobo.

You can download Everest Home Edition from here:
http://www.lavalys.com/products/overvie ... n&pageid=1

Run the report wizard and post back here.

JawZ · Post by **JawZ** » Tue May 10, 2005 5:47 pm

Didn't see Cats' response. PSU could be going south as well.

I'm still leaning towards RAM incompatibility.

X-Nemesis · Post by **X-Nemesis** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:10 pm

Here's the info UOD:

Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 1544 MHz (11.5 x 134) 1800+
Motherboard Name Asus A7V266-E (5 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 1 ACR, 3 DDR DIMM)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8366A Apollo KT266A
BIOS Type Award Medallion (08/20/02)
Award BIOS Type Award Modular BIOS v6.0

Here are some other things everest picked up on, as you can see, this Athlon 1800xp, in red, is reading alot slower than a comparable system in orange

Memory read comparison:

CPU Motherboard Chipset Memory Read Speed

AthlonXP 1800+ ECS K7S5A SiS735 PC2100 DDR SDRAM 1710 MB/s
Athlon-1.20 Abit KG7 AMD760 PC2100 DDR SDRAM 1700 MB/s
Athlon-1.20 Asus A7M266 AMD760 PC2100 DDR SDRAM 1560 MB/s
AthlonXP 1500+ Asus A7V266 KT266 PC2100 DDR SDRAM 1500 MB/s
This Computer Asus A7V266-E KT266A PC1600 DDR SDRAM 1443 MB/s

maroon · Post by **maroon** » Fri May 13, 2005 11:18 am

That's because you're running PC1600 mem vs PC2100 in the example. If you're running different brands/speeds of ram, you need to make sure the memory timings are set to the slowest memory you have. Download memtest86 and run it overnight before you buy a new ps.

X-Nemesis · Post by **X-Nemesis** » Fri May 13, 2005 12:19 pm

LMAO...I look like a loon after seeing my obvious miss....DOH!!!