Corsair XMS rev 1.1 vs 2.1

[Pntgrd]

I have had a 512 meg stick of XMS pc 3200 c2 since it came out, rev 1.1. Since Farcry came out, the need for 1 gig of ram arose. I have anoth system that had XMS in it, so I tried the stick from there and Farcry ran great. But since I also need my video machine, it was back to 512 while I figured out how to get another stick for the gaming box. I finally decided that just getting another stick of XMS would suffice instead of totally replaceing the ram. I found a stick of XMS 3200c2 on Ebay and picked it up. Never thought much about any compatibility problems since both sticks are XMS 3200 c2. BUT the new stick is rev 2.1. Aftre installing the new stick I started having some lockup problems. Nothing that is constant, just random locks. I pulled the older stick out of the video box and the 2 older sticks work fine together. Unfortunately, the video system is an older Abit BD7-II board and it will not recognize the rev 2.1 stick, so I cannot just use the 2 older sticks together. I have even thought of selling the newer stick, put both old sticks in the video box and picking up a gig of something new, but thta is probably overkill, not to mention expensive. Anybody got any ideas?

 

[uthungover]

I would run memtest86 on the new stick to make sure it's good. I have xms3200 and xm3500 runing together in dual channel with no problems.

 

[roll+call]

are there actual rev2.1's? aren't those misprints... or was that just w/ the bh-5's. Either way, if they were misprints for rev1.1's then they definitely should've worked fine together..

 

[Reefa_Madness]

I have a PC3200C2 512MB stick, revision 1.2, which based on the listing linked below, should be ch-6. While this list does not show an XMS PC3200C2 Rev 2.1, it does show this revision (2.1) for the PC2700, so that could be a valid revision number for the 3200, as well, and not a typo.

http://pub.lorenz.bei.t-online.de/winbondlist.htm

Have you considered, like you said, selling the new stick, but putting the two older XMS sticks in your game box and buying a valueram type product for your video box? That might not be quite as an expensive route, compared to buying new ram for your gaming rig.

Before doing any buying, I would also suggest contacting Corsair's RAMGuy and pose the question of compatibility to them to see if there are any known issues. I have a question...is it possible that you have ram with different default timings and these are not compatible. Have you changed the timings to something more relaxed and then try running then together. If that works, then you could continue lowering them until you find the lowest point that they both will run at.

 

[2coop]

I would definately run memtest on it by itself, at the recommended stock specs. If there is a problem and you have ruled out anyother source, i.e., by running a similar stick with the same settings with no probs., then try to send it back. If it works ok, you can see how much room you have to work with by memtesting at higher, faster speeds. I read on Corsair's website that v2.1 were misprints for v1.1 also. Also, is your first system an nforce board? overclocked? Some don't much care for 2 512mb sticks in dual channel with that type configuration. Also, did you put the new stick back in the same slot you removed the other one from on the BD7-II? Some boards (older) need a empty slot in between dual banked dimms. (most 512 sticks). Memtest it first to rule out any defects and wasting of time. 3 rounds is quite sufficient.

 

[Pntgrd]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will do the Memtest thing and see what comes of it. Funny thing is that since I swapped out video cards I have not had a lock up. I had a BBA 9800 Pro that was sometimes not wanting to boot, would give the "power cord not connected" error. Then all at once when it did finally boot, the screen was scrambled. I replaced it with another 9800 Pro and have not had a problem since. Of course I was gone most of the weekend so I have not tested a lot, but it looks like it may have been a screwy video card.