1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

Folks,

A mate has brought his Compaq mini tower to me for a look over as he's complaining that its running slow.

Over the phone he tells me it has 512Mb of RAM and so I suggest an increase to 2Gb ought to do him right for now till he's got the funds to replace the system.

The system is brought over and to my surprise I open the box to find it's fitted with a 1Gb PC3200 CL3 128mx64 DDR module.

Checking the motherboard manual I see it says to fit up to 2Gb of PC2100(DDR266).

My question then... is this apparent mismatch the reason for him seeing only 512Mb or could it be something else?

As PC2100 seems to be pretty scarce new these days will PC2700 (DDR333) be OK... I thought the memory just worked at the slower speed!?!

Cheers!

Rez

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

did you run crucials scan to test for compatability
edit you did read the manual

might be the old dont like double sided ram thing

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

The mismatch won't be the speed but instead will probably be the 128mbx64..

Which compaq is it?

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

Thanks for the responses guys!

Sadly the tower is no longer with me as his wife wasn't keen to be without the PC for too long... the deal was to bring it over for me to check it out, get memory type and motherboard make and model logged, order some new RAM for him and when the sticks had arrived call him to bring the PC back for me to fit... thus minimising the wifes PC downtime!

So, I can't say for sure which model of Compaq it was. The Motherboard is an FIC AM37. I've downloaded the manual and it's next to useless saying only:-
Advanced High Performance Memory Controller - Through two DDR SDRAM sockets accepts up to 2 GB totally with support DDR266/200 SDRAM.

THe safest bet for me is to track down some DDR266 1Gb sticks... the next question is do these come in different flavours that I need to worry about!?!

Rez

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

get him to run the crucial scan and order the same spec ram. You always have 7 day distance selling if it is no good. 512 is enough for XP if the system and startup is kept clean :)

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

Depends what you're doing... we have 1gb in one PC and it's fine for general web browsing/email, but start up more than one program or as my partner runs Rhino on it and it crawls like a pig ;)

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

Thanks for the suggestions folks. The Crucial site has come up trumps and ID'd the memory for the motherboard type! :D

Happy days!

Cheers!

Rez

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

well that will teach you to try and run an app like that on only 1 gig then ;)

for point of reference what is the pc used for?my daughters laptop only has only 512 meg of ram and she uses it generally for web browsing and as a media player plugged into her tv but its kept clean and runs sweet

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

I agree with you 512Mb on XP ought to be good enough if one knows how to keep it neatly trimmed (so to speak).

The system has onboard graphics so is robbing it of 32Mb, so only 480Mb left for the OS and any apps.

I don't think they're doing anything intensive but when I did briefly fire it up this evening to check the BIOS and see how it was getting into XP it was rather slow.

Perhaps 2Gb is overkill... I recommended it thinking RAM was cheap, but the CRUCIAL site is quoting £63 for 2x 1GB sticks so perhaps just an additional 1Gb to go with his current 512 should see him right.

Rez

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

give it a good clean and a visit to msconfig

Re: 1Gb Memory showing up as 512Mb in BIOS?
 

Oh it's not that, Some of the Rhino renders just eat memory nearly as bad as autocad ;) Last one she did used 2GB of swap file :shocked: