3 gigs of ram and vista 32

Hey guys ,

I have 2 sticks of this ram:

2 gig 3200

And I am going to get this ram:

1 gig 3200

Its the same type , series and timings , i have also flashed to the 1302 beta BIOS and have been running it for a few months with no issues.

My question is will this work? and will I still have dual channel?

I have an FX-57 , Model 7 , SH8-E4

And if you guys think this will work do you have any advice?

PS: I did read through the forum and think I have a pretty good idea that this might just work , but before I spend the cash I just want some knowledgeable encouragement.

Thanks and hope y'all are have'n a great day!

If it is matching RAM in each channel it should be dual channel. However, that CPU will not be happy with running 4 sticks of dual sided RAM. You will probably have to go to 2T and some relaxed timings. Do you need 3GB for a particular program? Are you running 64 bit or Vista? If no to those questions then 3Gb of RAM will not buy you anything and will in fact decrease your performance. If, however, you have a program that will utilize that much RAM and work faster because of it then it is a good choice.

Thank you for your response Merc ,

Yes I am using Vista (32) and it seems starved for ram , I have been to several forums and all have said increasing the ram should help smooth out some games for me , because of the way vista uses it , as it has others.

I was going to buy 2 gigs of some faster ram and over clock more but I am still paying for my video card and am kinda on a budget.

Besides I really like this Corsair ram , it has never failed me.

The SPD timings of this series ram is 3 , 3 , 3 , 8 still not to bad and after -*test*-('")ing it this should not make that much of a difference , however the 2T and 1T thing I have to admit I don't know that much about , do you think if I have to run it at 2T it would be a deal killer?? or just a trade off , more ram for slightly less speed?

I really need to do do something Vista seems to be a ram hog , I am really depressed that I cannot find 2-2gig sticks of ram for my board.

I think I am going to give it a try though , I have a file server I am throwing together for our home network since I have an extra copy of XP now and an old K8V board with a 3700 and all the fixins except ram and HDD , and the ram would go nice in there if it doesn't work out , otherwise I just hate to spend money not knowing for sure.

PS: these will be 2 matched sets of the exact same series , same timings (spd and otherwise) and I will have 2x1 gig matched in channel 1 and 2 and 2x512 matched in channel 3 and 4.

thanks for your input , I think I am going to give it a try , I'll let you know in a few days how it works out.

It would be worth it, then, even if you have to run 2T.

Thank you , that is what I thought but coming from the A8N Gurus here I have much more confidence.

ram ordered.

thanks again guys!!

OK I got my ram in , so far so good!!

After reading some of the threads in this section I took some hints and started out by setting my ram to 2T and spd timings restarted and the shut down , then I inserted the 2 512's in the the other 2 slots to keep the chips in dual channel.

At boot it shows 2883584K ok and total of 3145728K installed , not sure if that's good or bad.

After it boots into windows in CPUZ it shows 3072 @ 201.0mhz and all that seems well. BUT in windows ram its shows 2815 , that kinda goes in line with the boot screen , not sure if that's good or bad.

HOWEVER ALL my games run from good to even better than before and that to me is a good thing!! I played about 4 hours of STALKER with no problems and really good frame rates with ALL detail set to high.
BF2/BF2142 seem somewhat smoother but I think that most of that games problems are driver issues.

All in all I am very pleased , the ram seems to be good and the system is really stable!!

I have not tried to advance the timings yet because I'm not sure if that would be good or bad , and any advice/info on the RAM missing at boot would be helpful.

Thank you all for this great forum and the sharing of your knowledge of the A8n boards!!

PS: Had to move my CPU fan from the mobo header to one of the molex cables , it gave me a low fan speed warning at boot , seems more RAM uses more voltage!!

I wonder if I should up the voltage a little , it seems to run fine?

No problems yet!!

However , I notice that it is exactly 256mb that is missing at boot , BUT my video card has 256mb MORE ram in dxdiag , I guess thats normal?

I at first thought I had 1 bad 512 chip (only showing half the ram) , but my system seems very stable...for Vista!!

Gonna try to bump the timings this weekend!!

The 256MB going to the vid card is very strange. and showing 2883584K ok and total of 3145728K installed on the BIOS screen has me alitle confused about what exactly you are seing. I know that these little micro ATX rigs I have been building immediately take 128MB of RAM for video with 896MB of RAM showing in BIOS. That is integrated grahics, though, and an 8800GTX should not be doing that. I'm not sure why the CPU fan is showing low RPMs all of a sudden but I don't think it is a voltage issue.

Have you tried clearing/resetting BIOS/CMOS? I'd clear that (unplug, pull the battery, move jumper etc.)and then reboot and see what the BIOS page tells you.

I just installed the new NV driver 158.18 WHQL form the Vista update and my video memory shows "Approx Total Memory 1499".....my card only has 768. So I think this is just a fluke or something completely different.

I'm not sure what the hell is going on , maybe my board is messed up , but the fan will lose power if I plug it into the header on the mobo for power , its a high power fan so maybe thats the difference there.

its an older model of this fan:CPU fan

I will try resetting my CMOS tomorrow or Saturday , I have to unhook all the crap plugged in to my rig and pull it out of the desk to get to it.

I have no idea why it won't post showing all of my ram , maybe I do have a bad chip. But it doesn't fail the windows memory -*test*-('")er and my system is ROCK solid playing games at full detail for hours and hours with no problems. as for this "and showing 2883584K ok and total of 3145728K installed on the BIOS screen has me alitle confused about what exactly you are seing." when it posts , it shows the ram -*test*-('") , it says exactly "2883584K OK (Memory Installed 3145728K)"

Is there any option in the BIOS I can change or is there a setting I may have missed?

thanks for any info and help on this , I guess I could sent the ram back but I would hate to have to give it up , it has added so much to my running of my games.

Here are some picts , the memory post goes by too fast for me to get , but this shows in BIOS sort of what my memory posts:

user posted image