Should Pc133 ram work in a pc100 supporting mobo?

[Matt761]

I installed some pc133 on my cousin's 3 or 4 year old hp pavilion but it did not work. I found that the motherboard was made for pc100 ram. Do i need to get pc100 or is this just a bad stick?

 

[Steven4563]

pc133 should work in a pc100 motherboard with no problems have u got another system u check the ram in ??

 

[wanna_b_rich_13]

It depends. If your PC133 module is high density then it will not work in the PC100 system. If it is low density then it will work in the PC100 system.

 

[Matt761]

Unfortunatly, I dont have another system to check the ram on . How can you telll if its high or low density?

 

[repo man11]

High density will generally work with older chipsets. But you will only get half of the memory (64 out of a 128 etc.).

There are exceptions. Some older chipsets and newer SDRAM modules won't play nice, and the memory won't work at all.

But I've only experienced that a couple of times.

Any PC133 made since about 2001 is going to be high density.

As rare and expensive as PC100 can be, I think many people might just as well use PC133 and not worry about the loss. If a 256 stick of 133 is the same price or cheaper than a 128 PC100, the net memory increase is the same.

But if you are trying to run the maximum amount of memory possible, then finding low density PC133, or PC100 is what you need to do.

And if PC133 won't work at all, PC100 is your only option. Unless this board is old enough to have SIMM slots as well. SDRAM is better than EDO, but the performance gap can be closed if you can run more EDO SIMMs than you can SDRAM DIMMs.

 

[Matt761]

Well the mobo chipset is an intel 810 made by asus. Could it be that the ram is just a dud?

 

[repo man11]

Yes, you could have some bad RAM. Too bad you don't have another SDRAM board to check it with.

I just did a quick Google. The 810 is based on the 440BX. I know from experience that newer PC133 will work in a 440BX board. It will only show half as I mentioned before.

But the site I was checking also mentioned that the 810 can only handle 512 megabytes. If you install more, it simply won't be detected.

 

[Matt761]

Acctually, the board im working with can only support a 128mb stick for each of its 2 slots.

 

[Como]

Eh, i just ordered 128 megs of ram for my girlfriends older compaq, i dont know if its designed for pc100 or 133, but i assume it was 100 (althoguh the manual said 133), the system is an AMD K6, which mine is a K6-2, which is 100. i ordered 133, unknown if its high or low density, i hope it shows up as 128, if not she will only have 128 instead of the 192 we were assuming....la-choopah! guess i'll find out in a wew days when i install it...