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[xxxsoulxxx]

Hi, all i'm new. Some questions to ask.

Hi, heard that PC 100 ram could be used together with PC 133 Ram right?
According to the market price, PC 100 ram is more expensive then PC 133, isn't it smarter to buy a PC 133 ram since its cheaper?:cool:

My motherboard is MSI BX Master, which supports up to 1G of PC 100 ram, has 4 memory slots. Window XP, 192MB ram(128 and 64), Riva Tnt 2 64mb. P3 600.

1) Can i put 2 512mb of ram into 2 slots and leave the other 2 slots free? (supports 1G ram):confused:

2) Can i put 1 PC-100(128MB) and 1 PC-133(256MB) ram together into the 2 slots, and expect them to work together?:confused:

3) My pc hangs when i watch movies, play games. My pc gives a continious, non stop beep sound from my speakers, then few seconds later, it just hangs (still with the sound).
Is it my ram, my CPU or Video card that needs upgrade, or wrong BIOs configurement?:confused:

your help is much appreciated, thx all.:)

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

1.) No problem at all leaving 2 slots open, but blow them out with canned air if you do decide to use them someday.

2.) You can expect them to work, but you can't rely on it. It should be ok, but any time you mix different brands and speeds of RAM, it can get hard to tell. If it does work, it will run at PC100.

3.) RAM is a good possibility, but it could be your sound card or it could be that you have too many other things running background for memory intensive programs to run properly. I would shut down everything except systray and explorer in Task Manager and see if it goes better.

[mjc]

Coninuous beep could be heat or fan failure.

[saphalline]

1) Woah there, Budfred! I don't know if the 440BX chipset supports 512MB RAM sticks! In fact I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Up to 1GB of RAM in four slots? Sounds like xxxsoulxxx is limited to sticks of 256MB.

2) Like Budfred said, no guarantees, and they will run at PC100 speed if they do work.

3) It could be many things causing your system to hang, but most likely it's a software or heat problem. When was the last time you did a fresh install of Windows? Updated your drivers? Patched your games? You at least defrag once in a while, right? ;)

Must be nice to have a famous 440BX-based mobo, tho! :D

[xxxsoulxxx]

To all,
Just disovered that my graphic card's fan stop spinning.
Thanks for your help, and i think this is the best forum on net, just a few hours and it solved all my problems.
Thx all & keep it up.
:) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[skhips]

It is not healthy to mix ram like that but your mobo maual is the best place to check, I have done it and found sometimes it doesnt work full stop, if it does it will all work on the slower 100 mhz and recently some of our guys brought 40 x 512 DIMMS at pc133 and found that as the board only supported officially pc100 that it only counted half of the RAM, problems like this can sometimes be repaired with flashing your BIOS but if you havent done this before ask about it first, it's not hard but if you do it wrong you can't go back

[Budfred]

saphalline,

Good catch, I didn't think to look up the board/chipset since most boards these days are supporting 512 sticks. That would explain why the board would have 4 slots but only support 1 gig. Two 256meg sticks tend to be cheaper than 1 512meg stick anyway...

[ranchdog]

I've still got a couple of 440-BX boards I used to
thrash on.
They are limited to the 256MB stick as the 512's are
double sided units.
Good 'ol boards for a slot processor unit.


RD.

[Honcho]

I wont elaborate any further on the issue of 512 over 256, seems to be covered.
As for the PC133 issue, Pc133 is a compliancy standard more than anything. PC133 compliant SDRAM is PC66, PC100 and PC133 compliant and operates at PC100 Compliancy when installed in systems which are only PC100 rated or when installed inline with PC100 SDRAM. SO , yes it can be mixed with PC100 SDRAM provided the PC100 ram is 7 or 7.5 NS chips. Some 8NS SDRAM will also work if the ras/cas is 3-2-2 and you set your latency to 3 in the bios. IF this is not done, you will get errors while running programs and sometimes BSD's.
Be aware that some older SDRAM labeled PC100 is actually a better quality PC66 ram with a top speed of 100mhz, but is not actually PC100 compliant. Systems running intel BX chipsets were highly tolerant of this older RAM at 100mhz where as ALI and AMD MVP or 693 where not as tollerant and would not allow mixing of this with true PC100 ram,let alone pc133.
I suggest with your system, you purchase and use PC133 exclusively and do not attempt to mix in the older PC100, if you want reliability.