New memory! But lower benchmark?

[iamgregor]

I benchmarked my system with 3dmark 2001 and got a score of almost exactly 20,000. That's with:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
1GB dual channel RAM (2x512 Corsair Valueselect kit)
Nvidia Geforce 6800 OC (hacked with Riva Tuner to open the pixel shader and pipelines etc).

I restarted my computer to make sure it was running clean before I ran the test. Then I shut it down and added this:

2x1GB Patriot something or other RAM - Very nice looking with heat dispersion. I put them in the Blue primary slots. Note that this is also a kit for Dual Channel. I replaced the Corsair memory in the two black slots.

For those who are lost, here's the final configuration:

1Gb Patriot, 512Mb Corsair, 1Gb Patriot, 512Mb Corsair (each pair is identical memory)

SO... why did the benchmark come out at 14,000 after adding 2Gb of memory!?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Your memory timings probably changed. What was it before & after you added memory?

 

[realibrad]

What is the speed of the 512. try taking out the 512 memory and just use the 1 gig sticks. remember that your memory will underclock its self to what ever the slowest memory you have.

 

[iamgregor]

I decided to try 3dMark2005 after all just to see what happened. I got a weak score of about 2800 with the 512s only. Adding the 2 1Gb sticks dropped it to 2700 or so (this time i put the 512s in the main memory slots and the 1Gb in the other). I figure that will do for now because it's at least not crippling my machine and I KNOW the extra RAM is a good thing, but I was dissapointed to not see the number climb 🙁

My friend thinks that if I put in 4 1GB sticks of the same brand and model, it would work better (*sigh*)

 

[realibrad]

what are the speeds of the ram? if you have a fast set of 512, and add a slow set of 2gigs, it will slow down your system. please give us the speeds.

 

[evongugg]

The memory speed in the bios may have been readjusted automatically with the new memory. Download CPU-Z and verify that the memory is running at the speed and timings you paid for. If not, go in the Bios and adjust.

 

[eciacura]

If you have two sets of ram with different sizes you need to make sure that each bank of the memory controller has an equal amount of ram. So put put one 1gb and 1 512mb on channel "a" and the other set on channel "b". You may not be running in dual channel 128-bit mode, and defaulting to 64-bit single channel.

 

[shadowmaster625]

just leave out the two 512s and stick with the 2x1gig. The extra gig will spend most of its time unused even if it doesnt slow your system down, which in your case it does

 

[Manwe]

The Athlon 64 memory controller have made this issue

read about athlon 64 939 memory controller and you'll figure it out by yourself 😉

if you happen to have 4 sticks of double sided memories (makes no different what their speed is) the athlon memory controller will decrease the memory clock to 333 instead of 400 MHz .
if you want to use 400 Mhz instead of 333 you happen to have 2 options:
1. you may change to single sided memories instead of double sided (recommended solution).
2. you can over clock your memory or force your memory controller to work at 400Mhz (which is not recommended).

there also another comment to add :
windows XP / Vista - X86-32 can only use 3.2 GB of memory there's also another restriction for windows users .
in windows 32 bit the maximum memory that windows can allocate to a single application is 1.5 GB .
if you want to benefit whole of your memory there's switch for windows (you'll need to add in boot.ini ) which will let applications to use 2.5 GB per process but there's a draw back , you'll lose the compatibility with older applications/games.
there's also same restriction for linux users , Linux 32 bit kernel can allocate 3.5 GB of memory , but the linux kernel can let a single process use the whole physical memory which windows can't.

 

[The_OGS]

If you have two sets of ram with different sizes you need to make sure that each bank of the memory controller has an equal amount of ram. So put put one 1gb and 1 512mb on channel "a" and the other set on channel "b". You may not be running in dual channel 128-bit mode, and defaulting to 64-bit single channel.

Yes.
Post CPU-Z pages - I suspect you don't have 1.5GB in each channel!
Apart from an extra tick (2T) command rate, 4 sticks should be workable if properly setup & configured.

2x1GB Patriot something or other RAM

I hear that stuff is really good... LoL
Regards

 

[Rolenio]

Like Manwe said... It's because Athlon's memory controller. It just doesn't run so good with 4 sticks - lower speed, slower timings (defaults to 2T). I also had some stability problems with 4 sticks
So take out those 512's and leave just 1GB sticks. That extra GB won't be of much use anyway and is just slowing you down.

 

[The_OGS]

Like Manwe said... It's because Athlon's memory controller. It just doesn't run so good with 4 sticks - lower speed, slower timings (defaults to 2T). I also had some stability problems with 4 sticks
So take out those 512's and leave just 1GB sticks. That extra GB won't be of much use anyway and is just slowing you down.

Yes, there is truth here (especially with 32-bit OS).
2000 MB is still a huge lot of memory; therefore lose the 2 x 512MB if they are messing you up...
But post CPU-Z - maybe there is a very simple misconfiguration,
L8R

 

[iamgregor]

Mobo: Asus a8v
512s - Corsair Valueselect Dual channel kit - VS512MB400 (2.5-3-3-8)
1Gbs - Patriot PDC2G3200LLK (2-3-2-5)

I did not make any kinds of special adjustments for the RAM in my BIOS.

So what do you guys think? I've never tried to optimize or customize settings for memory before so maybe that's what I'm missing.

 

[iamgregor]

The MOBO manual is here: http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket939/a8v/e1994_a8v.pdf

It seems to say that it doesn't support dual channel operation with more than 2 sticks unless all 4 are identical.

 

[The_OGS]

512s - Corsair Valueselect Dual channel kit - VS512MB400 (2.5-3-3-8)

This stuff is okay, I could use it here for a Dell on my bench, it has 2 x 256.
So you could easily sell or upgrade one of your buddies...

1Gbs - Patriot PDC2G3200LLK (2-3-2-5)

This stuff is good! You should definitely lose the 512s because of the speed difference. 3GB (total) vs. 2GB (total) is not a big deal.

It seems to say that it doesn't support dual channel operation with more than 2 sticks unless all 4 are identical.

Yes, I remember this, it's true - and with all banks full like Manwe said, you can get speed fallback too.
Newer chipsets are much more tolerant of memory config in dual-channel, and I understand you can even run 1GB in channel 'A' and 2 x 512MB in channel 'B' now, and it still works.
Anyway: 2 x 1GB (Patriot) for you, no worries,
L8R

 

[iamgregor]

Should I do BIOS customizations for it or let it auto-detect?

 

[iamgregor]

Ok, I did just the Patriot, optimized everything in my registry that I could think of and I had mixed results. My 3dmark2001 score went back to the 20000 range (not stellar, but good), but my 3dmark2005 score went from 2800 to 4300! That's much better 😉

I'm going to set up a hardware profile and disable most of my hardware that I don't need when gaming and also run through my system processes again just to make sure I'm leaving as much processing power and memory for the games as possible