My new RAM wont run in pairs !!!

R

rupertx

New member
Hi Folks..
Until yesterday I was happily running 512mb ddr RAm and an AMD2000xp chip.
I got a feeling I needed something slightly quicker as I intend to start trying my hand at video editing using Adobe Premier.
So, off I trot to my local-ish computer shop and I bought an AMD2500+xp 333mhz chip which runs just fine at 166mhz .
I also bought 2 x 512mb ddr333 pc2700 strips of memory.
Now then, when i add them both my machine just trys to start then goe's into safe mode, over and over again.
When i take one out it starts perfectly every time.
If I change the jumpers on the board to 133 or 100 the chip operates at 1100 which sort of defeats the object.

The Mobo is a Mercury KT400 which supports 333 processors and suppose to support upto 400 ddr RAM.

Any ideas before I throw it away ?

Thanks in advance
 
C

catachresis

1
Rupertx, you may need to try seating the mems in different slots (1&3, 2&3, etc). Please make sure that they're seated firmly.

Scarecrow's suggestion to look for bios update is good. Another suggestion would be to talk to the AMD-obsessed folk at www.amdforums.com. They may be able to tell you about the idiosyncracies of your mobo.

rupertx said:
Hi Folks..
Until yesterday I was happily running 512mb ddr RAm and an AMD2000xp chip.
I got a feeling I needed something slightly quicker as I intend to start trying my hand at video editing using Adobe Premier.
So, off I trot to my local-ish computer shop and I bought an AMD2500+xp 333mhz chip which runs just fine at 166mhz .
I also bought 2 x 512mb ddr333 pc2700 strips of memory.
Now then, when i add them both my machine just trys to start then goe's into safe mode, over and over again.
When i take one out it starts perfectly every time.
If I change the jumpers on the board to 133 or 100 the chip operates at 1100 which sort of defeats the object.

The Mobo is a Mercury KT400 which supports 333 processors and suppose to support upto 400 ddr RAM.

Any ideas before I throw it away ?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
 
L

LTR12101B

1
Now THIS, I know!

You MUST limit the VCACHE size in Win98, so that thhis plus the AGP APERTURE (in BIOS) do not exceed 512Mb (and if RAM is <= 512Mb, this condition is inherent anyway)

Either edit System.ini (with NOTEPAD - you don't want to screw it up with Wordprocessor formatting!), or use a utility

NOTEPAD:

find the [vcache] section

Add the Lines
MaxFileCache=262144
MinFileCache=16384

This sets the Maximum to 256Mb (value is in Kb) and the Minimum to 16Mb - 256Mb should be ok as long as your AGP APERTURE is less than 256Mb - if equal, I'd take 1024 or more off the above value (it's not essential for it to be exact Megabytes, but that's the way I've always done it).
Setting a minimum is **REQUIRED** in order to validate the maximum - at least , thats how I remember it and have always done it.
 
S

scarecrow

1
You can't use more than 512 MB under 98/ME without some laborous tweaking (the above LTR12101B fix might not suffice), and anyway even after tweaking your perfomance may actually be worse than before. Since you have a fairly good computer, do yourself a favour and upgrade your OS to 2000 or XP...
BTW the last Premiere pro (that $ 700 cheapo) runs under XP only, not even 2000.
 
Last edited:
L

LTR12101B

1
http://www.bleedinedge.com/guides/win98_gig_ram_hack/win98_gig_ram_hack.html

They use a full 512Mb for VCACHE (wrong!)

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-43835.html
It seems some minor tweaking, and a lower VCACHE might help, as possibly may a mimimum 1024Mb of swap (as particularly if you don't set "ConservativeSwapfileUsage", it tends to back up all used memory to the swapfile if the system is idle - to allow for a rapid discard)

What IS pretty well accepted, is that it is RARE for Win9x to make sensible use of larger than 512Mb RAM, unless a single application actually requires that much. Unused memory tends to go to VCACHE, and there's a point where the CPU power to manage such a large cache outweighs any miniscule improvement in hit rate.


PS. If it's 98 FIRST EDITION, there's also a bug in NDIS.VXD with processors faster than 2.1GHz
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;312108
File not directly available, but there are archives around ... this bug should not be present in 98SE.
 
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