4x 1 gig sticks NForce chipset problem!

[Harlequin_uk]

My msi k8n neo2 plat will only display 3.4 gigs in BIOS - and apparantly its an NForce chipset problme , on ALL NF (1>4) chipsets!!

why 4 gig? well its about £220 now - alot less than just 2 years ago!!

and why? well i do video work so want lots of ram

Via chipsets will run all 4 gigs but at 100mhz!!


damn nvidia , why couldn`t they get it right!

Its not an OS issue - this is in BIOS - way before any OS , i`ve also tried it on 4 different boards (gigabyte NF4 board , dfi NF4 board , msi NF3 board and an asus board) and its all teh same thing!

3 gigs show up as 3 gig - yet 4 gig is only 3.4! - where the heck are the other 600 meg going!!

[ytrebil]

You're overloading your ram slots. I believe it's an issue with all mobos unless you want to get serious and feel like spending a few hundred on a motherboard. Don't believe it's just the NF chipset either.

Surely if you're working with videos you're better off with a top end gfx card or going SLI?

[Zak33]

You're overloading your ram slots. I believe it's an issue with all mobos unless you want to get serious and feel like spending a few hundred on a motherboard. Don't believe it's just the NF chipset either.

true

Surely if you're working with videos you're better off with a top end gfx card or going SLI?

false

he does need mega ram..and fast HDD for film editing. Vid card almost irrelevent

[Steve]

My A8N SLI's BIOS mentions something about 4GB mapping. I'd have a look, but I'd require that I restart, which I'm not doing right now

Will check later though

[Steve]

he does need mega ram..and fast HDD for film editing. Vid card almost irrelevent

Indeed, except with Tenomichi 3D Edit

[Harlequin_uk]

i have several 300 gig sata drives in RAID to keep the speed up

tried running the slots all the way down to 100 mhz - and its still the same thing

apparantly the new ATI based boards DO NOT have this problem

[malfunction]

Thought this was down to having a 32-bit CPU/OS? i.e. a 32 bit CPU (or a 64-bit one operating in 32-bit mode - i.e. on a 32-bit OS) can only address 4GB of memory and so has to use sections of that address range (not the actual RAM) for other purposes (chipset I/O, registers, etc). A 64-bit CPU and OS ought to solve the problem.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

The missing megabytes are reserved for PCI address space so the RAM needs to be reampped to over 4GB in the address space, You can try activating PAE in windows (/PAE switch in boot.ini) to see if the extra RAM is hiding somewhere.

[StormPC]

Video work does not require 4GB of RAM. Even professional digital photographs, scanning and hires image manipulation does not require that much memory. That's a lot of memory. Most of my computers barely use 4 gigs of harddrive storage (programs AND data) if you don't count the OS.

That much RAM on a single A64 is a bad idea. You'd be much better off with 2 high quality sticks running at DDR400+ speeds.

If you really need 4 GB of RAM then you need a multi-CPU Xeon or Opteron system. They are made to utilize quantities of 4 GB plus DDR.

You need dual Opteron 275 dual-core cpus (4 cores total), or better yet 8x Opteron 875s (16 cores) and 16 GB od DDR400.

[Harlequin_uk]

ok then - you try manipulating dvd`s using a page file then

[StormPC]

ok then - you try manipulating dvd`s using a page file then

Pagefiles are faster than RAM alone. That's why they exist. Exactly what kind of DVD manipulation are you talking about? What program are you using? What CPU are you using?

ytrebil,

Not a motherboard issue, a CPU issue. On-die memory controller...he's overloading his memory controller.

[nichomach]

Well, given that video (as opposed to still image) editing can require massive amounts of hard disk space (just see what happens when you capture 20 minutes of analog video to uncompressed AVI at reasonably high res - whoops! 4GB+ instantly), there's a great difference between it and the sort of still image manipulation that you're talking about, Storm. It's dreadfully processor and memory intensive especially when encoding the output for, say, DVD, and 4GB of RAM is certainly reasonable. Yes, a dual core Opteron setup'd be ideal, but working with what he's got, wanting to use the whole 4GB isn't unreasonable and would be a sensible upgrade bar the nForce prob.

[Harlequin_uk]

Pagefiles are faster than RAM alone. That's why they exist. Exactly what kind of DVD manipulation are you talking about? What program are you using? What CPU are you using?

ytrebil,

Not a motherboard issue, a CPU issue. On-die memory controller...he's overloading his memory controller.

AMD A64 3700+ san diego ,

pinnacle liquid edition and studio, final cut pro , adobe premiere etc etc


on die memory controller

its the same core the opterons use and there happy with 16GB+ of ram , so how is it a ram issue??

[StormPC]

Well, given that video (as opposed to still image) editing can require massive amounts of hard disk space (just see what happens when you capture 20 minutes of analog video to uncompressed AVI at reasonably high res - whoops! 4GB+ instantly), there's a great difference between it and the sort of still image manipulation that you're talking about, Storm. It's dreadfully processor and memory intensive especially when encoding the output for, say, DVD, and 4GB of RAM is certainly reasonable. Yes, a dual core Opteron setup'd be ideal, but working with what he's got, wanting to use the whole 4GB isn't unreasonable and would be a sensible upgrade bar the nForce prob.

It is not an nForce problem. VIA chipsets are no better at handling large amounts of memory. The controller is in the CPU, not the chipset.

Also, the reason video takes up so much space is because there are so many images. They are generally very small images compared to hires scans and it is not necessary to load an entire DVD in order to edit video.

Anyone who has played with a scanner at all knows how fast you can run out of RAM. Hires scans and professional publishing and manipulation of super high quality images require more RAM than video editing.

If a person really does a lot of video editing professionally he needs a lot more than an A64 with a Neo2.

You can use 16GB of RAM on an Opteron only if you are using 8 CPUs.

Not the same core as an Opteron, just similar to SOME Opterons.

Anyway, what I said still holds true. Those programs (and video editing in general) do not need more than a couple gigs. A faster CPU would help definitely, and a couple of 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 is not a bad idea either. It just depends on how fast you need to work.

[Harlequin_uk]

Via motherboards will run all 4 gigs , but only at 100mhz

NForce boards will not run 4 gigs at any speed


it is NOT a cpu issue

it is a chipset issue.

[StormPC]

It's true that both nForce and VIA motherboards are very bad at handling more than 2 gigs of RAM. There is a reason for this however, and it is because for maximum performance the memory controllers in the A64's (which are the only CPUs that will fit in your motherboard) do not handle more than 2 gigs very well. People who need high performance and more than 2 gigs of RAM really need to look elsewhere for their computer solutions. That's why the Opterons exist. If you need lots of RAM and CPU horsepower you really need to go Opteron.

BTW...you also need a 64 bit OS to use the kind of memory you'll be wanting in a multi-CPU Opteron system.