Problem with having 4 GB memory

[marcellusmighty]

By looking at my system specs, it's clear that my system has the potential to be killer good. I have another 2 GB stick sitting on my desk. Yes, it is identical in every way to the one that is in my PC already. However, when I try to put them both in together (dual channel or not) the dreadful BSOD appears before the loading screen even comes up. Any thoughts to this, 7 enthusiasts? This happened with Vista x64 as well.

 

[Romulinx2]

Some motherboards only allow memory in pairs.
Maybe this is the problem?

 

[marcellusmighty]

Well see, the two sticks are the same exact make and model and manufacturer. EVERYTHING is the same. I bought one stick off Newegg in 2007 (July) and the other a few months ago (November). Apparently Intel offered a BIOS update to fix memory issues on their make of the board, but I think BIOSTAR is being evil and has not released such an update.

 

[ikilledkenny]

Blow into the RAM bay, switch the other sticks around, and blow onto the part that goes into the RAM on the actual stick. It might actually work.

 

[marcellusmighty]

Haha! Actually that used to work for SNES games... sigh. But no go on the memory. Each one works separately, by the way. They are both good (XP is on my other partition... it's 32 bit, so it read 3.25 GBs of RAM).

 

[ikilledkenny]

Haha! Actually that used to work for SNES games... sigh. But no go on the memory. Each one works separately, by the way. They are both good (XP is on my other partition... it's 32 bit, so it read 3.25 GBs of RAM).

It worked on N64 and on PS2 CD's!

 

[marcellusmighty]

Ah! Yes it did.

 

[Anthony]

How many ram slots are there??

 

[ikilledkenny]

Ah! Yes it did.

Your 3rd RAM stick works? Or did you mean that blowing on the cartridge on an N64 worked?

 

[marcellusmighty]

There are 4 memory slots (8 GBs total capacity). I think it's a little dumb to say you can have 8 GBs of memory when only 1 stick of 2 GBs works.

 

[marcellusmighty]

I was saying yes, the N64 and PS2 games were fixed sometimes by doing that.

 

[Anthony]

Try putting the second stick in the third slot, if you have not tried already....

 

[ikilledkenny]

I checked this: mushkin enhanced Forums

This guy had a faulty RAM stick. Return yours to where you bought it and try again.

 

[marcellusmighty]

Okay, both of the sticks work, I know that. And no matter what slot I put them in when they are together, they do not operate on a 64-bit level. It is strange that by themselves, they do.

 

[Anthony]

Are you overclocking in anyway?

 

[marcellusmighty]

Nope, only the processor is overclocked. I even set the manual timings to 5-5-5-15 and the speed to 800.

 

[Anthony]

Nope, only the processor is overclocked. I even set the manual timings to 5-5-5-15 and the speed to 800.

Have you tried it on auto?

 

[marcellusmighty]

Yeah, and when it didn't work then, that is when I switched to manual.

 

[Anthony]

You need to remove the overclock before you test anything else, set bios to defaults and try again.

 

[johngalt]

This was a major problem with some nForce based boards as well (I, luckily, did not have that problem).

I am pretty sure that most of these problems are erased by a BIOS upgrade, of some sort, but if Biostar is not doing a BIOS upgrade you'll probably want to start searching the Internet using your motherboard model number and "4GB problem" as your search string to see what other users of your same mobo have gone through (and if anyone has found a solution).