Technical Question: RAM

2006-01-12 12:29:38

#1

coke: Aye up duck!; +440|6927|England. Stoke

Just got 1g of RAM Geil DDR 400, in dual channel 512mb sticks, but im not sure channel is enabled my motherboard is an ABIT KV7, is this dual channel, if so how do i enable it. Aswell I have an older 512mb DDR 333 stick, which I have put in aswell and it still works fine, but it only runs at 333. So which would be better running this 1.5g at 333 or 1g at 400?
Any help would be much appreciated.

2006-01-12 12:35:21

#2

deject: Got His War On; +37|6991|Golden, CO

Did it occur to you to look at your motherboard's manual? If I were to help you, I would have to go to Abit's website and download the manual for your motherboard. Use some common sense please.

2006-01-12 12:37:33

#3

Landepaukku: Finnish bush-man; +23|7055|Finland

Please, theres a tech forum post there. The best advice can be found there.

2006-01-12 12:50:13

#4

-_{MoW}_-Assasin: Member; +13|6946|Australia

it would be running at 333

The faster ram will throttle down to the slower one

Im not sure whether your board has DC or not, but if you put 3 ram sticks in, DC wont be enabled anyway

2006-01-12 12:51:45

#5

Gilgalad: Renaissance Soldier; +2|6995|Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

I agree that the "how to" tech questions belong at the ABIT site, not here. However, run 400 MHz rather than 333 MHz - it makes a huge performance difference (and over 1 GB of RAM isn't needed for BF2 as long as you run textures at Medium instead of High, other settings don't really matter in terms of RAM quantity needed).

2006-01-12 17:34:52

#6

Skruples: Mod Incarnate; +234|6918

your motherboard should have 4 DIMM slots, in 2 sets of 2. What is your current configuration? if you have only this new ram in your computer, you need to put them in the 1st and 3rd slot, and that should fix your dual channel problem. If you have all 4 slots filled then you might have to set your RAM timings manually in the BIOS. Refer to your motherboard manual on how to do that.

Edit: i would run only your new ram at ddr 400 dual channel, your ram will run much faster even if you have less of it total.

Last edited by Skruples (2006-01-12 17:36:31)

2006-01-12 19:07:31

#7

oberst_enzian: Member; +234|6960|melb.au

Gilgalad wrote:
over 1 GB of RAM isn't needed for BF2 as long as you run textures at Medium instead of High

flame me or whatever, but i don't think this is true. I had 1gb, and had some lag issues and really long load/verify times (with things set on 'low' when 'medium' was actaully recommended) - both of which went away when i stuck another 1gb in there. i agree with the other guys who have been saying that 2gb is the "sweetspot" for bf2, and with ram so cheap at the mo (at least where i am), it really shouldn't be much of a problem for most people to get some... just my 2 cents.

also, i didn't 'enable' my dual channel - when i only had a 1gb, i stuck 1 stick in the first slot of the first pair, and stuck the second in the first slot of the second pair (so third slot along), and there you have it "memory runs at dual channel"

Last edited by oberst_enzian (2006-01-12 19:14:23)

2006-01-12 19:16:56

#8

chuyskywalker: Admin; +2,439|7065|"Frisco"

Motherboard Manual. Either find your hardcopy, or head over to the manufactures website and download it as a PDF.

If you have it, it'll say so. It'll even tell you how to use it (which slots to plug the ram into.

And please, pay attention to where you file things, I hate having to click this damn "move thread" button...

2006-01-12 20:24:42

#9

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6989|PNW

I have two 512MB pairs of different kind of Corsair DDR400's; a couple of twinx's and some older cmx's. With both pairs in, there was a visual drop in frame rate than with the lower-latency twinx's.

THat being said, I wouldn't advise pulling down DDR400's speed with an additional pair of DDR333's...but of course, mileage may vary. You can try it, but run benchmarks with both configurations to see if it's actually worth it.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2006-01-12 20:25:01)

2006-01-13 07:23:24

#10

coke: Aye up duck!; +440|6927|England. Stoke

Sorry about posting in wrong section...
My motherboard only has, 3 dimms, so I assume this means I aint got dual channel. And I have looked in the manual and as with all motherboard manuals I seem to have had it dont tell me sweet FA. So assuming I aint got dual channel, would I still be better running with the gig at the higher speed (without dual channel), or the 1.5 at lower??

2006-01-13 21:39:06

#11

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6989|PNW

I believe that some 3-DIMM motherboards still have a single dual channel pair. Contact your manufacturer or look on their website if you can't find it in the manual.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2006-01-13 21:39:43)

2006-01-13 23:11:51

#12

coke: Aye up duck!; +440|6927|England. Stoke

Thanks, checked the website and from what I can tell the board only supports the single channel. So my question stills stands, now I cant get the optimimum speeds from the dual channel RAM, should I install the slower 512 stick as well?

BF2S Forums Technical Question: RAM

Gilgalad wrote:

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