Hello, i was just hoping for some quick information before i buy some RAM for a friend. He has an old computer with an MSI Apollo Pro motherboard with the VT82C596 chipset. I have been trying to research on supported RAM types, but i was also wondering, is there a maximum size for each ram chip? I.e, in its specifications it might say it supports up to 1GB of RAM, but is there a maximum size per chip also? Am i safe to buy two 512MB PC133 SDRAM sticks? Thank you for your help, Osirs
I found this on the net for that board... http://motherboards.org/mobot/chipsets_d/VIA/Apollo+Pro+VT82C596/ It says 1Gb max so i suppose it should work : )
Thank you, the page says FSB 100MHz/66Mhz, is that in relation to the processor? What of that imformation tells me if i can use PC133 SDRAM?
It seems that it is i 100MHz board, but the memory should automatically downclock from 133 to 100... Older boards unfortinatly can be a hit or miss with memory, the only thing you can do is try : ) But from that info it "should" work!
Well, the RAM arrived. I tried it, it displayed as around 128MB each, first disapointment. I then tried booting with them both in, which would restart at random points on boot up. I did get past windows login on the 3rd boot, but the computer was rather slow, and after trying to do a few things the graphics started screwing around etc and then it rebooted. I tried with one stick in incase it was not liking so much memory, but it still read the stick as around 200,000KB and was extremely slow. Is this the sort of behaviour you get when the mobo doesnt support that speed? (PC133) I am rather annoyed as ill have to sell this 2x512MB PC133 on again, losing out, and then have to buy some lower spec RAM. I hate old technology.
Its not neciseraly the speed of the memory! It could be the make of the memory, make of the motherboard or just that memory and that board dont like each other.... Alot of the time its trial and error... Like i said befor that technicaly should have worked! Whay dont you look into buying a new unit? or a new board/cpu/memory bundle? Out with the old in with the new : )
Argh oh id love to, but this is a friends machine, who is leaving for uni tmrw! Already said my goodbyes, so something like that is a little out of the question now.. I didnt realise different brands could be such a deciding factor, i just thought that bad brands last less time or are more likely to be faulty.. I myself am running a much more sane computer, upto date with reality. (AMD XP3200, ATI Radeon9800PRO, 1.5GB RAM) The RAM did run, just very slowly, and was detected as the wrong size. The RAM i bought was.. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/512MB-PC133-S...803939234QQcategoryZ14918QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem I would send it back, as it has 40day trial, but the postage costs are quite a lot, id be better to sell it back on ebay. Is there more to RAM then i thought? What is CL2, or Non-ECC and unregistered? Could these be issues to blame? Thanks for your help so far..
The CL and ECC "could possibly" be an incompatibilty with the board... The CL is the Clock cycle of the memory and ECC is a error correction, Memory with ECC support may be slower, yours is NON-ECC so that aint the issue, BUT the board may not like NON-ECC and maight only like memory that supports ECC... I would send them back under that 40day return... £4-5 signed for seems alright! £4-5 is good for you just trying the memory out... Atleast they are not charging you a re-stocking fee which could sometimes be upto 20%....
It may not be much, but i could probably sell it for the same on ebay. I just sold some Toshiba PC100 2x128MB for £13+£2.50 postage, and we all know it doesnt cost £2.50 to post to england I bought that for around £12. I really do need to get a decent amount of RAM in his machine. Atm he is stuck with his P3 600MHz with 2x64MB PC100 running Windows XP Pro! 512MB is the bare minimum i would leave him with, 128MB is just unusable. I just cant seem to find perfect information on his board, the page you found says it is a P2 compatible board, but his is using a P3..
check board site to see what ram is compatible with that motherboard. what is the ram limit per slot & how many ram slots does the board have??
I checked the manufacturer's site.. it's an old board and i don't think they still list it. That's the sort of info i've been trying to find. Perhaps the slots have a maximum of 128MB per slot as thats what these sticks were seen as?
Is single sided RAM more than a physical thing? because the previous RAM sticks had chips only on one side.. Do you mean it may not be able to read double sided RAM?
board might have problem reading double sided ram as have customer with same problem. reads 256 as 128.
well it seems as though the mobo cant support 64bit memory. Seeing as the mobo detected the ram as 128MB when it was 512Mb this leads me to assume that it can only use 16Bit ram. (128MB is 1/4 of 512MB, 1/4 of 64bit is 16bit.)
