Need help from the knowledgeable people in the forums.

[BigBear]

Ok, I own a rather old ASRock M266A motherboard. The specs from this company say it supports up to 2gb of 266 DDR Ram. This implies, since there are only 2 ports for the ram, that it supports 1gb chips.

Given this information, I recently purchased a 1gb stick of PC2100 266 184 pin ram. However, when my system runs now, it is only reporting it as a 512mb chip bringing my system to 768 and not the total I was hoping for.

Can anyone give me any insight as to why this is occuring?

I would try upgrading bios drivers, but why would this be necessary if it says it came originally with this support?

The only other explanation is that the seller stamped a 1gb heatsink on the chip and what really lies underneath is a 512 chip.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated because an e-mail to ASRock support has gone unanswered for 3 days now.

I just want to play this damn game.

[Stuie]

The existing stick is DDR RAM right? You're not supposed to mix the two types of RAM.

Try pulling out the existing stick and just boot up with the new one in DIMM slot one.

[Drachasor]

Memory can either be one or two banks (SIMM and DIMM respectively). A two-banked stick will have chips on both sides. A single banked stick has chips on one side.

I looked up the info on your motherboard, and it seems like it only supports two banks of memory at a time. That means two single-sided memory chips. Your gigabyte chip is probably double-sided, so it is only using half of it. You could try taking out the other chip and seeing if you get the whole gig (try the DIMM in both slots too).

Otherwise you'll have to either return it or wait until your upgrade your computer.

-Drachasor

[BigBear]

I am aware you cannot mix RAM types.

I wasn't aware however of the two sided thing being an issue. If that is the issue however, how would it ever be possible to support 2gb of DDR DIMM RAM with that motherboard? Do they even sell 1gb chips with all the memory on the one side?

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by BigBear
I am aware you cannot mix RAM types.

I wasn't aware however of the two sided thing being an issue. If that is the issue however, how would it ever be possible to support 2gb of DDR DIMM RAM with that motherboard? Do they even sell 1gb chips with all the memory on the one side?

I'm not sure...I think they might but it would be more expensive. In any case they can certainly advertise capabilities of the motherboard that for all practical purposes can't be used. It's not nice, but they can and do.

-Drachasor