Question RAM 4gb ddr2

[quy3501]

hey guys, my old pc is g31m-es2c and it has 1gb of ddr2 800 mhz RAM.Can any one find me 2 stick of 4gb ddr2 800 mhz RAM?And does the mainboard support 2 stick of 4gb ddr2 RAM?

 

[BFG-9000]

The G31 chipset is unable to remap above 4GB so you wil not be able to use more than 3.25GB even in a 64-bit operating system. It will install and be recognized fine but inaccessible except to certain specific programs like RAMdisks or eBoostr that use nonstandard memory accesses. Back in XP days I actually put the swapfile on a Gavotte RAMDisk to use this otherwise untouchable memory, but haven't found anything that works in Windows 8-10

I would suggest two 2GB sticks to max it out just because they are so cheap now, about US$5 a stick. Or you could get a single 2GB stick and settle for 3GB as that's just 256MB less usable memory--these chipsets are not picky at all about mixing sticks. 4GB sticks are far more expensive and would offer no benefit to G31.

This was an intentional crippling by Intel for market segmentation reasons, to steer buyers who needed more memory to the more expensive G35 chipset.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Specifications for the G31 chip set state only up to 4GB of RAM is supported

Intel G31 Chipset sheet

While you might, through trial and error, get 2x4GB to eventually work, you'd save yourself a lot of headaches by just going with the supported max of 2x2GB.

-Wolf sends

 

[BFG-9000]

The exact feature removed from this chipset was actually often included in advanced chipset BIOS settings, called MEMORY HOLE (or Aperture) or MEMORY REMAP (for PCI MMIO). It allows memory address space used by both motherboard and addin cards to be remapped above the 4GB address range.

As this chipset feature is disabled, these memory addresses take up space where actual memory may reside below 4GB, making some of the memory unusable. With G31 it appears to be the IGP that's taking up so much of this, even if a GPU is used instead and IGP is set in the BIOS to use the minimum 8MB dedicated and 128MB DVMT (Intel "Dynamic Video Memory Technology"). This results in a whopping 768MB showing as "reserved" and unusable if 4GB is installed. Of course anything above 4GB is also unusable too.