Gigabyte GA-8VT800

[koichee]

So I bought two 1 gig sticks of corsair DDR400 RAM (VS1GB400C3) for my old Gigabyte GA-8VT800 mobo w/ a P4 3.0ghz. The mobo has 3 single channel slots, and I've read that it can only have a max of 2gigs of DDR400, otherwise, the limit is 3gigs.

Anyhow, I plug in the ram, and after a bit of fiddling (i had to swap the sticks around a couple times) i'm able to boot. However, the bios only reads that it sees one gig of ram on POST.

The computer loads windows just fine, however- when i check my 'System Properties' in the control panel- it says I only have one gig. I check again with CPU-Z and it says I have 2 gigs and is able to separately detect both sticks of RAM. Pictures posted below.

I've tested both sticks of RAM on another system with memtest+ and no errors came up. I've swapped the RAM around, tried booting at a lower clock speed, increasing/decreasing dimm voltage... is there some sort of incompatibility i'm missing? anyone know of any sort of fix? thanks

 

[prong]

So I bought two 1 gig sticks of corsair DDR400 RAM (VS1GB400C3) for my old Gigabyte GA-8VT800 mobo w/ a P4 3.0ghz. The mobo has 3 single channel slots, and I've read that it can only have a max of 2gigs of DDR400, otherwise, the limit is 3gigs.

Anyhow, I plug in the ram, and after a bit of fiddling (i had to swap the sticks around a couple times) i'm able to boot. However, the bios only reads that it sees one gig of ram on POST.

The computer loads windows just fine, however- when i check my 'System Properties' in the control panel- it says I only have one gig. I check again with CPU-Z and it says I have 2 gigs and is able to separately detect both sticks of RAM. Pictures posted below.

I've tested both sticks of RAM on another system with memtest+ and no errors came up. I've swapped the RAM around, tried booting at a lower clock speed, increasing/decreasing dimm voltage... is there some sort of incompatibility i'm missing? anyone know of any sort of fix? thanks

Will your Gigabyte GA-8VT800 run two other 1 GB DIMMS than the Corsair and show 2 GB in the system properly? It may just be incompatibly of some nature with the 2 x 1024 Corsair DIMMs and your Gigabyte system. You could alays RMA the RAM with Corsair to be sure. HTH.

 

[Mondoman]

Unfortunately, ValueSelect is often not good-quality RAM, unlike Corsair's premium RAM. Have you tried running memtest86+ on the VS RAM? You might also try the Corsair memory support forums.

 

[koichee]

i don't have another 2 gigs of ram on me. however- before i bought the new corsair ram, i had 2 sticks of 512 patriot RAM which worked just fine.

I've run memtest on the corsair ram on my other system, no errors came up. However, when I try to run memtest on this computer- only one gig comes up.

both sticks work individually when i plug them in. it's only when i plug both in when one disappears.

Still quite stumped...

 

[Mondoman]

I'd try to see if you can get Corsair to take back the VS RAM, and get better quality stuff instead.

 

[koichee]

so i was getting really frustrated, and opened up my box to fiddle with the ram again. It started not booting again... so after trying every configuration i could, i finally just forced the ram sticks in (more out of frustration than anything else) so hard that i thought i would snap the ram or mobo.. Then I tried to boot again.... not expecting much.... and wala! it works. I went into windows and both gigs come up in 'System properties.'

In this high tech world, sometimes all that's required is brute force. =P

The motherboard is probably getting old (4 years and counting...), some connections getting loose or whatnot. It's interesting though that even tho when the bios didn't detect the ram in the slot- CPUz and SIW still were able to see the ram.

Anyhow- thanks for all the suggestions guys, i'll try to stay away from the cheap "value select" stuff next time... but a limited budget is a limited budget =P

 

[prong]

so i was getting really frustrated, and opened up my box to fiddle with the ram again. It started not booting again... so after trying every configuration i could, i finally just forced the ram sticks in (more out of frustration than anything else) so hard that i thought i would snap the ram or mobo.. Then I tried to boot again.... not expecting much.... and wala! it works. I went into windows and both gigs come up in 'System properties.'

In this high tech world, sometimes all that's required is brute force. =P

The motherboard is probably getting old (4 years and counting...), some connections getting loose or whatnot. It's interesting though that even tho when the bios didn't detect the ram in the slot- CPUz and SIW still were able to see the ram.

Anyhow- thanks for all the suggestions guys, i'll try to stay away from the cheap "value select" stuff next time... but a limited budget is a limited budget =P

I have to get my old DFI NF2 out and try that with some Kingston Value!