1GB ram makes the pc Dum?

Greets to all,
i have a little problem here and thought i'd share it with you guys.
I have an athlon 1.2, M/B msi k7t turbo r, Geforce2 MX 200 and recently added 512MB ram to have a total of 1gb SDRAM 133Mhz. The problem is that although the pc works fine, ram is measured ok when the pc is powered on, and windows xp have no problem detecting it, whenever i run an applicatino that needs direct3d the pc hangs! And not only games but even the screensaver preview, e.g. 3d flowerbox. Now it runs fine with 784ram but if i add the last 256mb and try to run something that needs direct3d it will hang again.

is there any logical explanation for that, and any solution that you can think of?
further info: each dimm is ok, each ram slot is ok, latest bios installed, latest drivers installed and everything works fine except applications that need direct3d.

thank you very much in advance!
Soulkeeper

 

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I can't think of anything other than that the chipset you are using (most likely a VIA 133 variant, after checking MSI's website), won't support more than 768MB RAM.

 

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thank you very much for your reply.
I will visit the msi site and see what i can find out about tha MB's chipset, the only strange thing is that windows detect 1gb of Ram and everything works fine except direct3d - as far as i know there is no reported conflict between 1gb ram and direct3d. until now that is

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Clarentavious is correct in mentioning to check your motherboards details.

There are possibilities that you might be able to get a FLASH upgrade, where your ROM that manages the board's information can be updated.

I mention this because my A-Bit BH6 motherboard had similar problems in regard to Processor and RAM amount. Highest it would allow was 768Mb RAM (3 x 256Mb p100/133).

There might well be an upgrade for yours, the only other option is to reload DirectX, as that might be at fault also.

(Basically it's about how the memory is "ranged", if windows manages your system where it increases the "ranges" and DirectX is trying to access an "Old Range", then obviously it's accessing somewhere it shouldn't. Causing your Lock, this is known as a Buffer-Overflow I believe.

 

i checked my M/B's specs at MSI's site http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=100&MODEL=MS-6330 Ver3.0
and the information about the Ram is the following:

Main Memory
* Supports three 168-pin unbuffered DIMM using six memory
banks.
* Supports a maximum memory size of 1.5GB (32M x 8).
* Supports 3.3v SDRAM DIMM.

if the specs are correct then the chipset supports over 1Gb of ram.

Could it be a memory allocation problem caused by software?
5 of 6 pci slots are already occupied and i think that the system has no other free resources for other hardware, could this affect the way Ram is managed?

Thanks again for your time and help

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Well actually, now that you mention it, yes that could be the problem, but adding more RAM shouldn't really affect that, unless your system cannot allocate resources to use your last DIMM slot.

You see, your mainboard has a specific number of IRQ's, this stands for Interrupt Request When a device of your PC wants to get the attention of the I/O bus, it sends out a signal saying "Hey, I need your services now"

When you exceed the number of given IRQ's by expanding (say, via plug-in through PCI slots, or USB devices, etc...), and INTs, you have to resort to IRQ sharing.

I know Windows XP handles IRQ sharing very well. However your board may not be PC 2001 compliant. This means, it may not work very well with APIC. You could be using up alot of memory addresses, controller interface ranges, etc...

In short, your motherboard may not be able to handle all of this

Gaming is very intense for your PC. It puts alot of strain on your video adapter, among other things. But you've said you also experince problems even when your screensaver loads, that may not use D3D, your screen saver is likely sprite based software rendering.

I'm really not sure what to tell you. It could be one of your DIMM slots is bad, and you don't know. Or you may have bad RAM on the last stick. By some unfortunate chance you could have been given ECC RAM (error checking and correcting), that will cause major problems unless your motherboard supports ECC mode and all the rest of your RAM sticks are ECC as well.

I'm really not sure what to tell you. You may want to try and remove some of your PCI devices that you aren't actively using (let's say, you have a Firewire card in there, well if you aren't doing any video capture today) take it out, along with whatever you don't need at the particular moment, then boot up and see what happens. You can put your PCI cards back in later, even if you find out that is the problem.

All VIA 133 based boards are terrible. Any that use the 686 southbridge are prone to the data corruption bug which is an extremely serious issue (especially if you are dealing with important files, like bank records for example).

You may actually want to consider a new motherboard, just an idea; if you find out too many PCI cards are the problem.

 

thnx for the tip. I will format the hd, remove the less needed cards and setup windows again, hoping that the motherboard will handle the last DIMM. But i think that i will listen to your advice and go buy a MB!

 

I had the exact same problem. I am currently running 768 because of the hastle. I put the rest of the ram in another computer so i didn't really lose anything.

-AntonK

 

* Supports three 168-pin unbuffered DIMM using six memory
banks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you using more than the 3 dimm's that it states?

 

*Are you using more than the 3 dimm's that it states?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Forgive me for not fully understanding the question. The motherboard has 3 Ram slots, and i have put 2 256MB 133MHz DIMMs and one 512MB 133MHz Dimm. To overcome the problem (which was stated above) i removed one 256MB Dimm to have a total of 768MB.

 

Soulkeeper

sorry my mistake.

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