4GB has worse performance??

keogh

keogh

keogh

Soldato
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Howdy,

Firstly my spec is in my sig, and OCuK have the GeIL 2GB PC6400 Ram on offer this week, so I decided to buy some yesterday, and got them this morning!

Well I installed them into my PC (running Vista 32bit) and started my PC, nothing happened... I kinda expected this as I had my ram clocked slightly. So started again and the ASUS will start at stock if the last boot never worked, so it started and I saw the post tell me my CPU and that I had 4GB OK and then it froze at detecting my IDE drive. No matter what I tried I cannot get the PC to boot with 4gb.

So I took one stick out and booted with 3gb, this boots in to windows fine and Windows tells me I have 3gb of RAM... not ideal as I paid for 4gb, but not the end of the world, still got an extra 1gb of ram right? Well I might aswell not have! I thought at this point, maybe one of my sticks is faulty, so I swapped the two new 1gb sticks over, and they both boot in the first yellow slot no probs... so one of the sticks isnt faulty. But putting one of the sticks in the second yellow slot BSODS on boot to windows all the time. So this leads me to believe its my dodgy ASUS P5N-E, as there are tons of rumours about the yellow RAM slots being buggy.. I reckon its that, but wanted to see if anyone else has any ideas?

Anyway, with 2gb installed my Vista rating is 5.7, and thats cos my lowest subscore was my CPU giving me 5.7, my ram scores a respectable 5.9!

Well with the 3gb, my score goes down to 4.8, and the reason for this is my memory undertakes my CPU and gets a subscore of 4.8?

I thought, maybe this is Windows being funny, but running 4 2MB tests of Super Pi shows a top time for the 3GB of 0.40s and a top times of 0.39 for the 2GB... so its deffo screwing me around?

So why is having 3gb of RAM installed giving me a worse score than 2? And anyone have any ideas why I cannot even boot with 4gb of ram?

Anyone got any ideas? Im on 2GB again now cos the performance is obv better, and the new ram has been put away in the drawer... I might flog it if I cant get it working properly as I could even make money on it. Otherwise Ill keep it incase I get a less buggy mobo!

p.s. I am running 0505 BIOS revision... I'm dubious bout updating, cos Ive heard people losing their overclocks with the new BIOS?

Any help will be appreciated!

ta
 
32 bit Operating Systems cant ultilize anything over 3GB of Memory (round abouts depending on your system)

Having 3GB of Memory installed, you wont be running the RAM in Dual Channel mode. Thats why your getting a lower score in vista.
 
You should still be able to post with all 4 modules in tho. This way your PC would see 3.3gb of RAM but still run in dual channel. Are the sticks all identical, this could easily be your problem. Try loosening off the timings to see if that helps. Chipset volts and RAM volts may need nudging too.
 
Yeah Im aware that 32bit will nto see the full 4gb, thats not a prob... but didnt think it would make the score worse, but I also never thought bout the dual channel aswell :)

All sticks are identical GeIL PC6400C4 sticks, and I tried setting the overclock to auto so theres no overclocking at all, and it just freezes on the post screen? I mean it changes each time though, first time it wouldn't boot at all, the it sadi my RAM was OK at 4GB and froze, then it froze halfway thru checking my RAM? This is with and without the overclock?

But the fact that if I run one of the sticks in the first yellow slot giving my 3GB the machine boots fine, but put it in the second yellow slot and vista BSODS and shuts down on boot... so that slot has to be faulty right?
 
Ill try again later and Ill up the DDR voltage a bit higher... its at 2.2 now, and GeIL recommend 2.1, so dont want to fry them :)
 
truebluecfc said:
And BTW its just a Vista score :rolleyes: ... As soon as you've got it stable i wouldn't worry to much about what Vista scores it honestly.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't in most cases, but I do if the score has gone down! My RAM score was 5.9, then adding 1gb it dropped to 4.8... thats a big drop, and its dropping for a reason, Vista is not getting as much performance from it, therefore nor will other progs.

But that was the reason I ran Super Pi aswell to see if it was not just windows being a muppet, and it wasn't. But the DUAL channel thing might be the reaosn for that, if I can get the 4GB in and booting then I may be good to go :)
 
ByteJuggler said:
Also, you might have to relax the timings slightly with 4 sticks of RAM. Try that and see if you can post then.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did try it on auto, and that usually whacks it to 5-5-5-18, and according to the GeIL SPD settings that is correct, so really that sohuld havew worked, but it didnt.

I'll try uping the voltage a bit, and Ill manually set the times to 5-5-5-18 and see if that works? Or should I slack the timings more? What do you suggest?
 
stickroad said:
32 bit Operating Systems cant ultilize anything over 3GB of Memory (round abouts depending on your system)

Having 3GB of Memory installed, you wont be running the RAM in Dual Channel mode. Thats why your getting a lower score in vista.
Click to expand...


I have 3gb crucial ballistix using 3 1gb sticks, get 5.9 in vista and cpuz says all 3 sticks are running in dual channel.

How does that work then?
 
Cpu-z said the same for me when running 3 sticks, i booted into the BIOS and it soon told me it was single channel. Must be a Cpu-z bug :(

I ran benchies on both the 3gb and 2gb setup and was indeed losing out on memory bandwidth with the 3 sticks pretty much confirming single channel operation.
 
Ok well you where right bout the dual channel, ive got the 4GB working now and the memory subscore is back to 5.9 like it was with 2GB. I've got the timings at 5-5-5-18 2T at the mo with a weak speed of 650mhz.

My super pi score is currently worse than 2gb now, so i am gonna try and tighten my timings and speed it up a bit, but if my performance stays below my 2GB in super pi then i really dont see the point in having 4gb?

Is it this mobo that is screwing me up? I mean in an ideal world 4GB will always be better than 2GB right?
 
Super PI doesnt need 4GB of ram, and your timings are slacker than when you had 2GB installed. However the performance drop shouldnt be 'too bad'. On the other hand, if you run out of ram with 2GB installed and the system starts to swap, then the PCs performance will drop extremely fast, at this point 4GB will show massive gains over 2GB.

To be honest its only really with a 64bit OS that anything over 2GB is an improvement, As soon as you go above 2GB in 32bit XP, it switches to PAE mode which isnt a good thing as that also slows the system down. 64Bit OS's are also somewhat more memory hungry in general.

If my math is correct, you need to get your ram up to 755mhz to match your overclocked FSB which I am guessing is 377 (377x9 = 3393 or 3.4ghz), as currently your ram isnt matching the Core2 Duo's fsb/memory bandwidth.

A better test would be to find a bunch of applications which take your PC above 2GB memory used, and then see what happens. You wont do it with a single app though, as again limited by 32bit windows any 1 application can only request a maxiumum of 2GB memory.. On a 64bit OS, a single application can request a lot more than that. (Currently limited to about 48GB by windows I believe, and most consumer motherboards only support 8GB so, thats a curren real limit there).

Vista64 flies with 4gb. (It also pre-loads a ton of stuff for snappy loading times)
 
Cheers corasik, Ive finished fiddling now, and I have maxed at 661mhz @ 3-3-3-8 (which is pretty good) and I have run several tests and it seems stable. But I will run orthos on it for a while later and see if it dies. I tried 695mhz on the ram and the pc wouldnt post, so 661 seems the best I can get.

I do have Vista Ultimate retail, so I can easily install 64bit Ultimate, but I actually dont use it for a, what you might think, stupid reason in that iTunes will not minimise to the taskbar, I use itunes all day whilst working, and to not have it in the taskbar is not good. And Apple dont support 64bit OS, so I dont know when they will fix it!

So I am actually level on super pi to what i was on 2GB, and I have noticed that Photoshop CS3 runs faster!

As long as the PC runs stable then im good to go!

ta
 
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