Memory not fully detected

Sudden

Sudden

Sudden

Soldato
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Just finished a first build, and things for the most seem to be running ok. one problem is, ive instaleld 2 gb of Corsair 6400 C4 ram. Earlier it was detecting the full 2gb in BIOS, but now its showing only 1.12 gb of memory in windows. I checked BIOS and it says "1.12 gb in use"
motherboard is P5N32 SLI SE.

I tried the sticks individually, and BIOS and windows both show the proper 1 gb in use. When I put them in together though, it goes to 1.12 instead of 2.

Any ideas? New build, so a bit nervous and completely lost :s
 
Hehe, yea. when it first happened, I thought it might be cause of sp2. So that's the first thing I did. didn't help :(
 
Ok. I just checked system information and a program called Belarac avisor to create a system profile. System information in accessories - system tools shows "total physical memory as 2048 MB"

Belarac advisor shows this under memory -

1152 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 1024 MB (serial number SerNum0)
Slot 'DIMM1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM3' is Empty


I have no idea what that means.

anyone?
 
Sorry for the delay. Had a profesional looking at the problem as well, but he has no idea either =/ Said he was going to talk to asus directly.

I checked that Everest Prgram. It shows system memory as 1152 as well.

Did find out one thing though. I'm running Quad SLI (2 x 7950 GX2) and if you remove one card, then it detects the ram properly. But not with both.
Nvidia says this motherboard is compatible with the cards, so I have no idea what the problem is.

I just saw a beta version of a new BIOS on the asus site, should I try that out?
 
Sudden,

Yes! Go ahead and update. That bios (305) will fix this issue, it did for me.

When you're up and running, could you possibly let me know how you get on with running Quad SLI?

I have the same setup and it's largely stable, but I have had a handful of problems (lockups and BSOD's to be precise) with Oblivion, 3dmark06 (only once) and Half Life 2 (only twice). Gone through the usual (memtest, Prime95 and a number of other apps/games including FEAR, Doom 3 and Farcry), all seems rock solid.

Infact, I even managed to test Oblivion in a completely different system running Quad SLI (using the earlier Non-SE revision of the motherboard) and the same problems were present, so I'm almost certain it's driver related...would still like to know your findings though as I'm trying to gather as much info as I can!

Thanks. Good luck!.
 
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hey,
yea, i went ahead and tried it out yesterday. Was a pain cause the Asus update utility wouldn't let me do anything and kept saying I don't have an Asus motherboard so wouldn't even install. Had to do a fresh windows install and that cleared that up.

It's detected the ram properly now :D Everything seems to be running fine, but I just tried Age of Empires III and Rise of Nations II for now.

I have oblivion lying around somewhere, so i'l give that a shot when I can and let you know how it works out. I'm on a 17" monitor right now and will be ordering a 24" as soon as I can find a decent retailer with a pre-delivery inspection thing so I can be sure of no dead pixels. I don't think Quad would even begin to be used unless I try it out on that screen, so update could take a lil while.

Haven't had any BSOD's yet, or lock-ups really except for one time when it took a rather long time to load up windows (could be that I was just impatient :p)

Let me know if you need any other things tested out, i'l see if I can do em. I doub't il be able to test out Half-Life 2, since I don't really wanna play it, but i'l defintley test out oblivion cause i've been thinking of playing it.
 
Hello again,

You can test Quad at lower resolutions, granted, you "see" less benefit, but It's still useful for establishing stability. I assume you're using the latest drivers (91.47). I'm finding these very stable and have not been able to "force" a crash in anything other than Oblivion so far.

The crashes in Oblivion seem entirely limited to the "load screens" - ie. when moving from one environment to the next - the climbing bar will finish, but then instead of the next screen, I'll just get a blank one, with looping sound, or a BSOD with a reset.

Disabling "autosave on travel" has so far rectified this issue, so perhaps it's a resouce conflict that occurs when both video cards, the sound card, hard drive controller etc, are all called on at exactly the same time, sounds very unlikely I know, but it's all I can think of!

By the way, there is a function called "memory remap" in the BIOS, which when enabled, stops large amounts of physical memory from "overlapping" with the range assigned to various system components (pci devices etc). I found that switching this feature on sped up performance in windows x64 hugely, it may be the reason for your "load time" being slow, worth a mention anyway.

Check how fast Memtest is able to run with your setup, if it takes over a hour to complete one full pass, then I would advse enabling it.
 
hey,
haven't run memtest yet, i'l do that soon. Did run Oblivion for a bit though. Just got out of the seweres and finally into the open. No crashes or lockups or anything, no problems at all and running everything on full and autosave is enabled. Running 91.31 drivers at the moment, will update soon.

Do you have a creative soundcard by any chance? While looking for my ram fix, I cam across a number of reports of people having a conflict due to the creative soundcards that a small change in the registry fixes. I can dig it up for you if you do have a creative.

I did come across that memory remap thing online while searching, and also read reports where it actually slows things down. I'm running windows 32bit right now. I'l run memtest soon as I can, and if as you say, it takes more than an hour to complete a pass, i'l try this change. Thanks for the help :)
Relief having someone else with a similar rig to yours :p Least someone who could possibly have the same problems, lol.
 
Hello once again!

Glad to hear you're still running smoothly. I didn't actually try Oblivion on this machine until I was a little further into the game (copied my saved games from another computer), so I don't know if the bug only applies to certain areas.

Report back when you get to Weyon Priory and the areas around it such as Chorrol, the town nearby. Moving from outside to inside environments and vice versa seems to be a factor.

These drivers (91.47) do seem the most stable so far and crashes of any kind are extremely rare now. Entering The house at Odil Farm for the first time is the only way I can "force" the symptom, but only if I travel there from Weyon Priory and pick the lock!

And yes, I am using an X-fi card, but I also tested with onboard audio and with no sound atall, same issue. Thanks for the advice though.

Could you possibly post your full system spec, might help isolate things a little further.

By the way, some of those "reports" you were reading may well have included comments by me on another forum, so apologies if you're getting a sense of deja vu, Quad SLI is indeed a very small world at present :) ;)
 
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Sudden said:
Ok. I just checked system information and a program called Belarac avisor to create a system profile. System information in accessories - system tools shows "total physical memory as 2048 MB"

Belarac advisor shows this under memory -

1152 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 1024 MB (serial number SerNum0)
Slot 'DIMM1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM3' is Empty


I have no idea what that means.

anyone?
Click to expand...
You should be using DIMMs 0 and 2 (yellow) or 1 and 3 (black) to enable dual channel support.

You're using both slots from 1 channel, so the ram is forced to run in single channel mode.
 
Hi again,
haven't got to priory yet, but i'm at that market place in the first town you reach. I was going in and out of a bunch of shops, and when I tried going into the last shop, (divine elegance or something was the name) comp. hung. Didn't repeat though. After rebooting, went into the shop again and it was fine. One problem though, or maybe a glitch, some of the people, the bottom half of thier faces ahve a dark shadow on them. Not all, just a few of the people. Any idea if that's a glitch or a driver bug or if its supposed to be like that?

lol, yea, could be you. As you said, small community :p The fix I read was changing the Wownode64 or something to aWownode.

I ran memtest. No problems there. Told me to run two copies testing 778 each. I did that, it took 17 minutes to complete and no errors.

My system spec is -
x6800 processor (stock)
EVGA 2x7950 GX2 (91.47 now)
Corsair 6400C4 - 2x1 gigs
raptor - 74 gigs
barracuda - 320 gigs (where game is installed)
Asus P5 N32 SLI SE (beta drivers)
onboard sound
Games running at 1024x768 res

Installed a bunch of texture packs today that I found on gamespot, but they shouldn't really affect stability in anyway.

What about you?


Sir Random, thanks for the advice. I had tried the ram's in all combination of slots, but didn't work. But I was putting them both in the same channel. i just checked and the professional I gave them to put them in DIMM 1 and 3 so it's duyal channel now. Thanks for the help, I had no idea it made a difference.
 
Hello there!

Thanks so much for reporting back. Well, sounds like you have exactly the same issue, at least things are consistent!

You could try disabling autosave now, I can virtually guarantee it directly addresses this "load screen bug" , I myself have not had it since doing so. I think you only need to disable it for "traveling", as resting and waiting don't seem to cause the problem.

The face shadow thing seems to be a graphical glitch, under graphics options, if you disable "self shadows" - I think that's it - this goes away.

I don't think the texture packs will give rise to any further issues, I'm about to scour for a few plug-ins myself, had great fun in Morrowind with third party stuff!

I ran a 10 1/2 hour loop on 3dmark 06 last night with sp2004 (prime95) running in the background, not a crash in sight, so the drivers are certainly improving, I just hope they can iron out these last few bugs, then they can start optimizing for speed!

Incidentally, did you use the windows version of memtest, if so, I meant the dos version, Memtest86+ is the full name, this is the one that runs slow without memory remap enabled.

It doesn't really matter as the problem only seems to apply outside the windows environment ie, during an OS installation, it also affects Windows XP x64, but as you say, this doesn't apply in your case.
 
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balth_dire said:
Hello there!

Thanks so much for reporting back. Well, sounds like you have exactly the same issue, at least things are consistent!

You could try disabling autosave now, I can virtually guarantee it directly addresses this "load screen bug" , I myself have not had it since doing so. I think you only need to disable it for "traveling", as resting and waiting don't seem to cause the problem.

The face shadow thing seems to be a graphical glitch, under graphics options, if you disable "self shadows" - I think that's it - this goes away.

I don't think the texture packs will give rise to any further issues, I'm about to scour for a few plug-ins myself, had great fun in Morrowind with third party stuff!

I ran a 10 1/2 hour loop on 3dmark 06 last night with sp2004 (prime95) running in the background, not a crash in sight, so the drivers are certainly improving, I just hope they can iron out these last few bugs, then they can start optimizing for speed!

Incidentally, did you use the windows version of memtest, if so, I meant the dos version, Memtest86+ is the full name, this is the one that runs slow without memory remap enabled.

It doesn't really matter as the problem only seems to apply outside the windows environment ie, during an OS installation, it also affects Windows XP x64, but as you say, this doesn't apply in your case.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips, i'l give them a shot :)

Try out the texture packs you see on gamespot, defintley worth alook :) Make the game look even better! Natural Environments+LOD replacements and something are the ones ive used so far. Great looking with those.

I used the windows version, memtest.exe.
 
hey Balth_Dire, just wanted to ask if you've played Rise of Legends?
It was running fine, I played a mission, then quit. Played a mission sometimelater and quit again.

Just now though, mission started and a couple of min into it, system hung. Rebooted, tried again, got a bit further, but hung again. Had to hit re-sit both times.

Just thought i'd check if you've experienced it if you've played the game.
 
Hmm, a little worrying. No, I haven't played it, but I'd imagine I'll be in for the same experience were I to try.

Are you using the latest version of the game, any updates to download? Battlefield 2 was unstable for me to begin with (crashes with looping sound again), but since updating to version 1.3, it's been fine...touch wood.

I really don't know exactly what's causing this problem, but it's obviously something pretty fundemental with either drivers or compatibility. Instinct tells me it's bandwidth or resource related in some way, like something is exceeding a specific limit on very rare occasions and only certain software is causing this to occur.

I've yet to speak to an AMD user with the Oblivion issue, but one or two have been reporting the same or similar errors in Half Life 2, X3 reunion and Call of Duty 2. Perhaps there's a function in the drivers we could disable or enable that holds the key. I've been trying to investigate whether Nvidia or Asus are aware of issues with Quad SLI and if so, what steps are being taken to address them, but I get the impression they know no more than you or I, perhaps less. Getting through to them atall is like trying to melt tungsten with damp book of matches, it's not good. There isn't even an "offical" list of Quad SLI certified motherboards. :rolleyes:
 
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lmao. yea, this is one of the problems we face with new technology. Since not many people have it, we're the guinea pigs. That professional I took it to though, said an Asus guy comes by thier shop every week or so so he'd talk to him about it. I tried calling him up to tell him that the beta BIOS version fixes it, but couldn't get through. Might be better to leave it and let him talk to the guy. Maybe the Asus guy will have some more ideas.

There was an update that I just downloaded so will try out the game with that and get back here. It might just be my game copy as well (bought it in a store for roughly a pound :p) but no way of knowing.

Friend of mine should be bringing Call of Duty 2 over when he comes next, so i'l try that out too and see if i'm experiencing any problems with that.

Still, great to have someone else with a similar set-up to yours :D Quad SLI, as you said, is pretty uncommon, so not too many people to turn to if any help is needed.

Edit - no official list, but there is one on SLI Zone, and the SLI Zone site is linked on the nvidia site, so that's the closest we're getting to an "official list"

annoying thing is, this motherboard is listed as being Quad SLI certified. I even went for the corsair ram over the G.Skill ram just because it was on the list as certified. Gets annoying when you check for compatibility and certification at every step, and still face problems.

I just had a system hang, not sure why, possibly to do something with Alcohol 120% and image mounting, but windows kept getting stuck on the loading screen, but booted into safe mode fine. I tried a couple of things and it finally booted into windows, but this does get annoying. After spending so much, the last thing we should be is guinea pigs.

Edit 2 - Just tried the game again. Got a lot further, but then hung again. Have no idea why it's happening because as far as I can make out, none of the symptons are the same >_<
 
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Lovely stuff! :D

I should point out that even the list on SLI zone does not specifically say the boards are "QUAD" SLI approved, just "SLI" approved. On the other hand, their list of PSUs DOES contain a QUAD SLI certified sub-section. Call me paranoid, but I'd consider that suspicious.

Indeed, I did research and went through the compatability check list just like you...damn annoying. :rolleyes:

Not had the startup issue...yet, but again, that might well be down to "memory remap" not being enabled in the BIOS, remember that each of those video cards has 1gb, coupled with your RAM, this makes 4gb in total. I believe the recent BIOS update only partially solved the issue that sparked this thread and that there are still conflicts occuring. I know this is the case with Xp x64 as it literally slows to a crawl if MR is disabled, so perhaps the issue is present in Xp 32, but not as manifest. In any case, if you continue to suffer with this, it's worth a try.

Yes, I've had problems with Daemon Tools (similar to Alcohol) in the past, prefer to use NoCD patches to launch games if they have copy protection - these are all games I legally own of course.


EDIT - does it actually hang during gameplay, or during loading, level data etc?
 
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That's a good point about the PSU's being Quad and the motherboards just being SLI. Never noticed it before, but yea, is a bit suspicious. Then again, if it's not a site put up by Nvidia directly, not much point for them to mislead us. (not sure if Nvidia does have anything to do with the site, that was just the impression I was under. That it's a seperate site that nvidia simply endorses)

Where exactly is the memory remap function in BIOS? i'l give it a shot if this problem happens again.

Yea, i'l look more for a nocd patch. had found one earlier, but there doesn't seem to be one for the version i've got after updating it. I'l look a bit more, and if not, i'l just re-install the game and get the nocd patch for that version.

It hangs during actual gameplay, and as far as I can see, completely random. Never happened when I do a specific thing, just random. Not happened during loading or anything, but this problem just popped up a few hours ago.

I expected a few problems here and there when I build this comp, specially since its a first build, but this is getting ridiculous. Updating BIOS for the first time was a nightmare where it kept telling me I don't have an Asus motherboard =/ and this is a pretty common problem apparently. More so with creative soundcards.
 
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