Help, how do I check - PC800 or PC1066 ?

N

nodoze

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• Sep 6, 2002

• #1

I purchased what I thought was 1066 RDRAM & the stickers that are on the memory all say 1066, but I suspect that the vendor MAY be trying to pawn off some PC800 on me.

I ran SANDRA & the memory bandwidth is in the PC800 range, but I couldn't find anything that would tell me "the RAM you have is..."

I know that I can try peeling off the stickers & see if anything is being covered up, but I'm looking for a way to ID the memory without doing that.

Does anyone know how/if I can tell beyond any doubt what the memory really is?

 

OP

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nodoze

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• Sep 6, 2002

• Thread Starter
• #2

bump

 

Zeus

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Nov 16, 2001

• Sep 6, 2002

• #3

What chipset is on your mobo? It could be that it doesnt support pc1066 and only pc800. Being backwards compatible it will only give you pc800 bandwidth readings.

try this program
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.htm
It doesnt tell me what RAM specs ive got but I aint got RD ram so.....

 

Last edited: Sep 6, 2002

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nodoze

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• Sep 6, 2002

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• #4

I'm using an Asus P4T533-C (i805e) motherboard.

The only BIOS settings I can find for the memory is the RDRAM/FSB freq. ratio. The available options are (Auto, *3, *4) & I left it set at the default "Auto". Should it be set to *4 ?

 

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mjones73

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• Sep 6, 2002

• #5

What processor are you using and do you have it overclocked?

 

OP

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nodoze

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• Sep 6, 2002

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• #6

P4 2.8 & it is not overclocked...yet.

 

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nodoze

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Anybody? Any ideas?

 

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mjones73

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• Sep 6, 2002

• #8

Since the 850E chipset doesn't support PC1066, it's probably defaulting to *3 which would run your memory at 399Mhz aka PC800 speeds. Try forcing it to *4 and see if it runs. That will push your memory to PC1066 speeds. Of course if you start overclocking the ram speed will go even higher and you might need to back off to the *3 multipler.

 

OP

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nodoze

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• Sep 6, 2002

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• #9

Thanks for the input guys.

I did try just bumping the RDRAM/FSB to *4. SANDRA would report performance levels that were in the 1066 range. However, as long as the ratio was set to *4, the computer would appear to hang up during boot. If I waited long enough it would snap out of it & perform normally. I knew that this wasn't right, so I set the ratio back to "Auto" & started poking around.

The BIOS that shipped with the board was version 1003. I flashed the BIOS to version 1006 & presto, all the problems disappeared.

 

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mjones73

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• Sep 6, 2002

• #10

Cool deal, enjoy your extra memory bandwidth