Problem with having 4 GB memory

[Orbital Shark]

Problem i have is i've got a lappy & can't change the BIOS. It's 2.5 years old & I thought 'Why not give this old girl a makeover'......

Shame on me LOL

 

[Night Hawk]

Check the present version on now to see the latest or last is newer. It does seem a rippoff when you have to pay for a 3rd party tool and not see one provided at the support site. Those can be more of a problem at times over using one provided by the manufacturer to start with.

The problem with laptops however is the much faster turnover of newer models were some get discontinued faster then desktops. If you can't find the tool or updates at the support site sometimes you can find them at a site that archives some of the older driver and bios updates for the more popular models at no charge.

 

[Orbital Shark]

Thanx, i'll try that

 

[Night Hawk]

One thing to remember as well is to make sure you find a good way to backup the present bios anyways in case of a mismatch for some reason or simply a bad flash. That's being prepared ahead of time for disaster recovery just in case.

 

[marcellusmighty]

I really think this whole issue is absolutely ridiculous. I actually saw a report for memory tested on this board, and my brand was not one tested... so that raises the possibility of being an incompatible brand. But then, why does 32-bit XP detect both at 3.25 GBs? The voltage is 1.85. Now that I'm thinking more about it, when I got the board off Newegg, it was stressed that "timings of (at least?) 5-5-5-15 are to be used". So the voltage and timings are A-Okay, it seems like. The only other thing is the BIOS, I'm pretty sure. And that makes me seething mad!!! Why would Biostar be so lax with their support? They are the ONLY company that I have checked (among I think 5 others) that did not offer an update for this particular chipset (the 965). I'm not getting another board anytime in the foreseeable future, which is why I'm so persistent in trying to find a solution. Props to John Galt for his efforts! This seems so trivial. Orbital, I think that from now on, I would say to avoid third party BIOS vendors (which probably seems obvious at this point) The solution is out there, somewhere!

 

[Night Hawk]

I would check out the Biostar forum if they have one there since others have likely run into similar problems with the same chipset as well as compatibility issues with that brand of memory as well as others.

Well that idea got shot out of the water fast while the e-support option for making an inquiry is seen at BIOSTAR

 

[marcellusmighty]

Well I guess my next question should not be about how to make this work (since it obviously won't, thank you very much Biostar!) but about who wants the extra 2 GB stick! :sarc:

 

[ikilledkenny]

I would take it, but my craptop uses laptop RAM. And my old desktop uses DDR.

 

[Night Hawk]

One thing I found for selecting a working pair of dimms for any board was looking at the recommended brands list for those brands of memory seen there before ordering any for a new case or for an increase on an existing system. Unfortunately when running a search with their own engine all you see is "no data"!

You know it supports upto 8gb by one look at the board's own specifications seen at BIOSTAR

Apparently the over 2gb factor for 64bit Vista is still being seen with 7 there whether it's the brand or type since DDR2 800 is supported.

 

[marcellusmighty]

Well even if it actually is the brand that's the culprit, I'd lose money by buying new sticks, and it'd be pointless. Why not just get a DDR3 board and RAM if I'm going to have to buy new stuff anyway? Maybe I could file a suit and claim "misleading information" or something.

 

[Night Hawk]

The timings were one things if too high for what the board generally takes. That may tend to be standard or value ram over any good performance dimms. If the brand you bought is on the recommended list the type would be the likely cause there.

Now for going out and rushing into a new board just to run DDR3 you are also looking at a total upgrade which will cost you far more since you may end up needing a new cpu as well as memory and a few other things to consider.

If the new dimm turned out to be defective you would simply see that replaced by itself or a new pair since the prices on DDR2 are low at this time. If you were planning a new build soon then I would say wait until the new one to spend on what you want there.

 

[marcellusmighty]

One of the things I made sure to check out was the timings and voltages when I purchased the parts from Newegg. For the board, it specified "5-5-5-15", and the RAM used is G. Skill "5-5-5-15". Voltages are 1.8-1.9 volts, as the board says. So the memory is perfect in theory (frequency is also 800 Mhz.). So the only thing, however weird it is, is the brand. Of course, that's assuming the BIOS is not the problem (ahem...). I've seen 4 GB of DDR3 RAM at 1066 Mhz. for around $80. The X58 is about $200, and the Core i7 is around $260. I could sell my board, memory, and Core 2 for probably a good $250-450 on eBay. Maybe it's worth it.

 

[Night Hawk]

The thing that comes to mind here is that you have gotten into some mislabeled if not defective memory if each dimm works by itself. That would make them incompatible to each other while still working with only one or the other in.

 

[marcellusmighty]

I thought about that too. So I tried both in a 32-bit environment, and they worked up to 3.25 GBs. the error message I got under vista and 7 when trying to boot into 64-bit was "BIOS may not be fully ACPI compliant" which is why I think it's the BIOS, and my suspicions seem to be confirmed by Biostar's negligence to release an '08 or '09 update like the other guys did! So I sit in a no solution zone.

 

[Night Hawk]

One reason I've been staying with Asus lately is seeing an excellent online support with frequent updates there. While looking over other makes I keep ending back there each time it seems!

When Vista was first seen I was worried about the present model board in since all it saw then was XP drivers until going direct to NVidia for the nForce chipset updates. 7 recently found some new ones for the same model. At least I got out of that one there!

 

[marcellusmighty]

Well I can say one thing for sure, and that is I will no longer purchase any chipsets from Biostar in the future.

 

[Night Hawk]

Biostar only makes the boards not the chipsets as a rule. Intel was the one that made the chipset for that model according to your system specs.

The problem with Biostar appears to be a lack of ready support. Anytime you have to go out and pay for some 3rd party in order to get a bios or any other update seems a little bit lame there since every other company seems to have some download pages seen. Your best option is going to Intel directly to see what you can find there since they made the chipset to start with.

 

[marcellusmighty]

What's weird is that Intel's 965 chipsets (all of the variations) are unable to provide a compatible BIOS. I think Biostar went ahead and made their own little "Micro" variation, because Intel doesn't have any mention of a Micro version of their board. Soon, I'll be getting a Core i7 chipset and CPU, (hopefully, anyway) and I am tempted to just buy it from Intel for this very reason. Direct support is worth the extra pennies anyday.

 

[FreakyFerret]

Hi Marcellusmighty,

(I'll bet) The problem is the speed of your RAM. I bought 2 sticks of 800 Mhz RAM for my pc. Stuck them both in as dual-channel and got a BSOD shortly after boot. Through testing, I discovered that if I install not as dual-channel but single, they work fine btw. I then downgraded a speed and system works perfectly now.

Problem was my board couldn't handle the 800 Mhz speed.

Both sets were 2 sticks of 2 gigs each.

What model is your board exactly?

 

[chev65]

So you don't even have access to your voltage settings in bios?