Couple of questions

Hey all,
I have a couple of questions regarding the system that I just purchased and setup. Everything went pretty smooth with the install, etc. I have a LG SATA burner/drive that I've installed on the machine also that I've left out on my specs below.
But here are a few questions I need to figure out. Please forgive me since I haven't been up to date on building computers. The last computer I built was so long ago!!!!! This system was for a friend of mine. He plays games once in a while and had a budget. Not the best stuff but I guess it what was ok.

1. When I'm in Windows, I only see 2.5GB of memory. I did put the memory into the first slot and the third slot, seeing that it might be dual channel? Is this correct? Do I need to set something in the BIOS?

2. When installing Windows, it seemed SLOW. After hitting F8 (the EULA), it took forever for the next step to happen. Is this due to the 500GB hard drive? Did it have to scan it or something? I'm used to 120GB drives here at work. <shrug>

3. How far can I overclock this chip and what specs can I get up to? Any guides on what to do?

Thank you all!


Here are my specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 925 Deneb 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor Model HDX925WFGIBOX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
BFG Tech BFGEGT2201024D2BE GeForce GT 220 1GB 128-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

1. You might have used a 32-bit version of Windows. (but then it should register ~3.5GB instead of 2.5)

Your motherboard might also by picky about RAM. But if that was the case, it would probably register just one stick, and thus would show 2GB. Go into your BIOS, and make sure it sees all 4GB. If it does, it's probably what I said previously.

2. Nah, that happens on all systems. Nothing to worry about, unless it takes extremely long... Upwards of 10 minutes. From my experience, it takes ~5 minutes or so.

3. Haven't overclocked it, but I've seen these go up to 3.6GHz without that much trouble. That's with proper cooling of course.

Back to number 1, what Windows did you use? Anything on the box/cd stating "32-bit"?

Krogen said:

1. You might have used a 32-bit version of Windows. (but then it should register ~3.5GB instead of 2.5)

Your motherboard might also by picky about RAM. But if that was the case, it would probably register just one stick, and thus would show 2GB. Go into your BIOS, and make sure it sees all 4GB. If it does, it's probably what I said previously.

2. Nah, that happens on all systems. Nothing to worry about, unless it takes extremely long... Upwards of 10 minutes. From my experience, it takes ~5 minutes or so.

3. Haven't overclocked it, but I've seen these go up to 3.6GHz without that much trouble. That's with proper cooling of course.

Back to number 1, what Windows did you use? Anything on the box/cd stating "32-bit"?

Click to expand...

Thanks Krogen.

I'm using the 32bit version of XP(with SP3). When I checked the motherboard it did register 4xxxMB of Ram. I guess it is working. Still don't know why. I have to look into this more because I finished building the system, started the OS install and went to martial arts class. Didn't get home till late. Only looked at it for a short while.

I want to push the chip just a bit but I only have a stock cooler on it. Don't want to go nuts or anything though.

Ingman21 said:

Thanks Krogen.

I'm using the 32bit version of XP(with SP3). When I checked the motherboard it did register 4xxxMB of Ram. I guess it is working. Still don't know why. I have to look into this more because I finished building the system, started the OS install and went to martial arts class. Didn't get home till late. Only looked at it for a short while.

I want to push the chip just a bit but I only have a stock cooler on it. Don't want to go nuts or anything though.

Click to expand...

The 32-bit version of Windows is your problem. You need a 64-bit version to take advantage of the full 4GB of RAM.

Or actually... You don't, but it's a little bit more complicated. There is something called physical address extension that was introduced beginning with SP2 in Windows XP, but I'm not exactly sure how that works.

A quick google search and I found this on Tom's Hardware:

The solution is easy, open up your boot.ini file in the root of your system drive. At the end of the line for your XP installation, add "/PAE" without the quotes. This enabled the physical address extensions which will allow you to use up to 4GB of memory (the upper limit in XP Pro).

Click to expand...

PAE still doesn't allow you address all 4 gigs. Your physical memory addressing will end at 3 Gigs due to a 1 GB video card. A 64-bit OS is the only way to take advantage of all of it.

Quigsby said:

PAE still doesn't allow you address all 4 gigs. Your physical memory addressing will end at 3 Gigs due to a 1 GB video card. A 64-bit OS is the only way to take advantage of all of it.

Click to expand...

This is correct. PAE is more for server applications, if I remember correctly. It won't do any good with addressing memory, you need a 64 bit OS due to the 4GB total limit.