Memory not being read

[jlchianese]

?
I have a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP MB that will not read my third stick of 512Mb DDR 2700. I have tried all the sticks by themselves and they all work. I can use two together, but when the third one is installed it doesn't show up. Has anyone heard of this happening and if so do you know how I can fixit

[deeppow]

You didn't tell me that you had eliminated the possibility that it is a bad slot, i.e. two sticks will run in any two slots. Or you could have placed a stick in each of the 3 slots one at a time and booted.

[Drisler]

or maybe all three slots cannot be populated???

[jlchianese]

Sorry, Yeah I tried all the slots, with all three sticks. Giga says yes it can handle up to 3 Meg.

AMD-2100+
ga-7vaxp Mb
Patriot 512Mb 2700 DDR
Nvidia G4 4600ti
Sb audigy 2
2x 80Gig WD HDD's
365 W Power supply

[deeppow]

When you say it doesn't see the 3rd stick, what are you seeing to reach that conclusion? Boot screen or some benchmark tool?

This should all be automatic and you as a user don't have to do anything other than put the memory into the board. Sounds like the mobo may have a problem. I would suggest you contact Gigabyte or your reseller if you've not already.

[jlchianese]

It is not seen upon boot, the DMI tool I have also doesn't see it. I've written to gigabyte, however all the forums I go to seems like gigabyte isn't too good at replying back... So in the long run I may be SOL

[Drisler]

Gigabyte took two weeks to answer my first email...Then another week to reply to a second.

[jlchianese]

hope they are faster than that... only have 15 days to return the stick

[notdrugged]

If all sticks work, apparently it's a limitation of the RAM you're using, not the mobo. I would send it back anyway, and just get whatever money back you can. It would help, in any event, to contact Gigabyte and find out what types of RAM you can use for the target storage size you are going after. The more RAM you use, the tighter the rules. For instance, alot of motherboards say you can use up to 2gb of unregistered RAM, but after that, must be the registered type. Who knows why, but I think your motherboard just isn't going to accept what you're using.

[jlchianese]

Never thought of that. Actually I didn't realize that RAM had a limitation on how much could be used. I thought that this RAM was pretty decent, or so I was told.. Patriot Brand EP (Extreme Performance) - 2700 512Mb. Have you heard anything on them?

[jlchianese]

Looks like I get the bone head award for the day... decided that the two sticks of 512 were enough... took one out left two. Rebooted and guess what I was only reading 512. grabbed the stick I had just taken out, replaced the one not showing up in my DMI tool and it now read 1024... I guess that I should have paid closer attention when testing them earlier... thanks to everyone that responded though, it was much appreciated.
Thanks, James.

*** One more question: Heard something about losing my DDR If I have three of the same sticks maxing out the slots. I now have 3x 512Mb Sticks (that work) installed. something about the last stick needs to be a 1Mb Stick.
Have you heard this?

[notdrugged]

so you're saying if you mixed the Patriot ram with one of another type, then only one stick is recognized....If so, it confirms some of my suspicions about mixing RAM.

[jlchianese]

No I removed one of the Patriot sticks(the bad one) and replaced it with a Stick of Samsung. So it is working WITH mixed memory, I was surprised too.