Ultimate PC Building Revisited
Where to start on this one? My post about building the Ultimate PC still holds up as being one of the most TOP of the line PCs you can build today, but this PC comes with many issues that have yet to be resolved either by Bios or Drivers from the manufacturers. So be warned about building the most incredible system of the future just yet.
If you remember in my earlier post I mentioned that you could add up to 4 Gig of RAM within this system as (4) 1 Gig sticks? Well at least the specifications say you can have up to 4 Gig of DDR RAM? This is where the first issue with the A8N-SLI Deluxe comes in. Originally when I made my post the Kingston RAM I mentioned stated on the QVL list as being capable of being installed with 4 sticks at 1 Gig each and would be in Dual Channel mode. Now the funny thing about this is that if you go to their site now for this motherboard some things have changed???
This picture is directly from their manual - look at the 1024 Kingston RAM and where they have dots for A, B, C which means (4) 1 Gig Sticks are compatible. You can click image for larger view.
This is directly from the A8N-SLI Deluxe Manual
Here is their revised page on their site - look at the Memory QVL
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8nsli-d/overview.htm
Now on this chart for the QVL of RAM they removed a V from the third column where originally in the pdf format they had a Dot in that column for the Kingston 1024 RAM, so my question is why the change???
My brother actually built this system down to the very last nut and bolt so everything within my original post has been created. He put in his (4) 1 Gig sticks and yet the system sees all of it but the OS was only seeing 2 Gig? He tested all the RAM individually and they are all functioning properly and are in working order. Well after him mentioning to me about this, I went to Asus's site to see if there was a bios setting or something, and that was when I stumbled upon the newly refurbished site for the motherboard and checked the QVL list to see that all of a sudden it's been changed? I then pointed my brother in that direction and stated if I were him I'd call Asus and ask what the hell is going on because this system was built on their original specifications? He ordered the exact RAM that is listed in the above chart from their manual for that very reason to have 4 Gig running in Dual Channel mode.
The only way this motherboard can handle 4 Gig of RAM is with (4) 1 Gig sticks because I've yet to see 2 Gig sticks and with this motherboard having 4 slots for RAM this would be the only way to get it that high.
My brother states that the system and bios see all 4096 of memory but Windows is only seeing the 2 Gig. So this could be a limitation of the OS? Remember Windows 98 couldn't see over 512 unless you edited one of the .ini files. Now I'm really going to have to learn some more... lol.
Now comes the second issue with this Newest Technology called SLI. My brother bought (2) Asus EN6800 PCIe Video cards so that he could embrace this new incredible technology. Notice that these cards are neither GT nor Ultra just vanilla 6800. Now originally on the Asus site any SLI capable video cards could work with SLI as long as both cards were exactly the same. Now they have a QVL list of cards that wasn't there originally. Now mind you it doesn't even have listed its own 6800 vanilla card just the GT and Ultra versions? Anyway don't get me wrong these cards do work in SLI mode but from what I've been reading all over the NET that a serious issue occurs with the 6800 Series of cards, meaning vanilla, GT, and Ultras. My brother tried playing his favorite game which is Battlefield Vietnam and both cards work great in Single card mode so there is absolutely NO issues with hardware with his system and he is using the latest and greatest of drivers and has the latest bios which is what any Techie will tell you did you check this and update these?
Here is a link to a great article mentioning the problems with the 6800 series of cards:
6800 SLI Problems
The answer is all hardware, drivers and bios are perfectly FINE and installed properly. What he stated is that the screen has a fuzzy or messed up line that crosses the middle of the screen as if electrical interference as seen on say a TV with a neighbor with a bad spark plug on his motorcycle passes your house. I've yet to try newer beta drivers with him to see if any of this would fix the issue but from what I've been reading all over the NET this is a known issue but only with any 6800 series of cards? I also told him to contact Asus once again because these are their video boards as well as their motherboard. I'll post back with any results that I can come up with on this story or anything found out from Asus.
He is very happy with the system, its stability, and speed, definitely it's the top and the fastest system he's ever had or for anyone to have for that matter. Currently he is running the system with only 2 Gig of RAM showing and with the cards SLI turned OFF and using only (1) 6800 card. The only regret he has is that he bought the extra video card ($399) and the extra 2 Gig of RAM ($465) and until Asus comes up with a cure to rectify this problem he spent almost $900 dollars with what the specifications stated could be done with this motherboard and set up.
I'd just like to say even though this is the latest and greatest technology and yes it's in its infancy this would still fall under FALSE ADVERTISEMENT. Either by Asus themselves and Nvidia, something needs to be done or there are going to be a lot of computer enthusiasts very upset with their purchase.
More as news becomes available. I currently have sent my brother WHQL 71.24 Nvidia drivers to see if the SLI problem can be fixed with Battlefield Vietnam with these yet to be released officially from Nvidia.
Update: Ok from a lot of reading and many comments I've come to the conclusion that the RAM is being seen properly from the OS but it seperates the RAM into (2x2) 2 Gig configuration this being 2 Gig for Kernel and 2 Gig for Application Space which equals 4 Gig, this is OS specific. This will probably be the case until Windows XP 64 is released or if he would install Windows 2003 Server Enterprise or Linux. As far as the video drivers are concerned they did NOT do the trick. So there still is an issue with 6800 Series and SLI function next he'll be trying a BETA Bios from Asus to see if this problem is fixed.
If you remember in my earlier post I mentioned that you could add up to 4 Gig of RAM within this system as (4) 1 Gig sticks? Well at least the specifications say you can have up to 4 Gig of DDR RAM? This is where the first issue with the A8N-SLI Deluxe comes in. Originally when I made my post the Kingston RAM I mentioned stated on the QVL list as being capable of being installed with 4 sticks at 1 Gig each and would be in Dual Channel mode. Now the funny thing about this is that if you go to their site now for this motherboard some things have changed???
This picture is directly from their manual - look at the 1024 Kingston RAM and where they have dots for A, B, C which means (4) 1 Gig Sticks are compatible. You can click image for larger view.
This is directly from the A8N-SLI Deluxe Manual
Here is their revised page on their site - look at the Memory QVL
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8nsli-d/overview.htm
Now on this chart for the QVL of RAM they removed a V from the third column where originally in the pdf format they had a Dot in that column for the Kingston 1024 RAM, so my question is why the change???
My brother actually built this system down to the very last nut and bolt so everything within my original post has been created. He put in his (4) 1 Gig sticks and yet the system sees all of it but the OS was only seeing 2 Gig? He tested all the RAM individually and they are all functioning properly and are in working order. Well after him mentioning to me about this, I went to Asus's site to see if there was a bios setting or something, and that was when I stumbled upon the newly refurbished site for the motherboard and checked the QVL list to see that all of a sudden it's been changed? I then pointed my brother in that direction and stated if I were him I'd call Asus and ask what the hell is going on because this system was built on their original specifications? He ordered the exact RAM that is listed in the above chart from their manual for that very reason to have 4 Gig running in Dual Channel mode.
The only way this motherboard can handle 4 Gig of RAM is with (4) 1 Gig sticks because I've yet to see 2 Gig sticks and with this motherboard having 4 slots for RAM this would be the only way to get it that high.
My brother states that the system and bios see all 4096 of memory but Windows is only seeing the 2 Gig. So this could be a limitation of the OS? Remember Windows 98 couldn't see over 512 unless you edited one of the .ini files. Now I'm really going to have to learn some more... lol.
Now comes the second issue with this Newest Technology called SLI. My brother bought (2) Asus EN6800 PCIe Video cards so that he could embrace this new incredible technology. Notice that these cards are neither GT nor Ultra just vanilla 6800. Now originally on the Asus site any SLI capable video cards could work with SLI as long as both cards were exactly the same. Now they have a QVL list of cards that wasn't there originally. Now mind you it doesn't even have listed its own 6800 vanilla card just the GT and Ultra versions? Anyway don't get me wrong these cards do work in SLI mode but from what I've been reading all over the NET that a serious issue occurs with the 6800 Series of cards, meaning vanilla, GT, and Ultras. My brother tried playing his favorite game which is Battlefield Vietnam and both cards work great in Single card mode so there is absolutely NO issues with hardware with his system and he is using the latest and greatest of drivers and has the latest bios which is what any Techie will tell you did you check this and update these?
Here is a link to a great article mentioning the problems with the 6800 series of cards:
6800 SLI Problems
The answer is all hardware, drivers and bios are perfectly FINE and installed properly. What he stated is that the screen has a fuzzy or messed up line that crosses the middle of the screen as if electrical interference as seen on say a TV with a neighbor with a bad spark plug on his motorcycle passes your house. I've yet to try newer beta drivers with him to see if any of this would fix the issue but from what I've been reading all over the NET this is a known issue but only with any 6800 series of cards? I also told him to contact Asus once again because these are their video boards as well as their motherboard. I'll post back with any results that I can come up with on this story or anything found out from Asus.
He is very happy with the system, its stability, and speed, definitely it's the top and the fastest system he's ever had or for anyone to have for that matter. Currently he is running the system with only 2 Gig of RAM showing and with the cards SLI turned OFF and using only (1) 6800 card. The only regret he has is that he bought the extra video card ($399) and the extra 2 Gig of RAM ($465) and until Asus comes up with a cure to rectify this problem he spent almost $900 dollars with what the specifications stated could be done with this motherboard and set up.
I'd just like to say even though this is the latest and greatest technology and yes it's in its infancy this would still fall under FALSE ADVERTISEMENT. Either by Asus themselves and Nvidia, something needs to be done or there are going to be a lot of computer enthusiasts very upset with their purchase.
More as news becomes available. I currently have sent my brother WHQL 71.24 Nvidia drivers to see if the SLI problem can be fixed with Battlefield Vietnam with these yet to be released officially from Nvidia.
Update: Ok from a lot of reading and many comments I've come to the conclusion that the RAM is being seen properly from the OS but it seperates the RAM into (2x2) 2 Gig configuration this being 2 Gig for Kernel and 2 Gig for Application Space which equals 4 Gig, this is OS specific. This will probably be the case until Windows XP 64 is released or if he would install Windows 2003 Server Enterprise or Linux. As far as the video drivers are concerned they did NOT do the trick. So there still is an issue with 6800 Series and SLI function next he'll be trying a BETA Bios from Asus to see if this problem is fixed.
posted by Cellar Dweller at 11:42 AM
10 Comments:
Current Athlon 64's only support 5 banks of memory. Each side of a RAM stick is a bank. This means if you put double sided memory in the first two slots, you need a single sided stick in the third slot. The next stepping of the chips allows at least one more bank, which is possibly why they put 4 ram slots on the board. You can still use all 4 RAM slots if you use single sided sticks of RAM, but you can't exceed 5 banks currently. I do not believe the capacity of the sticks matters, according to AMD's website the chips support "Supports 64-Mbyte, 128-Mbyte, 256-Mbyte, 512-Mbyte, 1-Gbyte, 2-Gbyte and 4-Gbyte memory technology." This seems to imply to me that a single stick can have up to 4 Gigs capacity (somebody correct me if I'm wrong).
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ok I've done some reading and see what you mean about the Single Sided and Double Sided within the manual but the point of the post was that they changed their specs and what they said was able to be done? Now this SYSTEM sees all the RAM and so does the OS in any System Information etc. but it does not show the RAM as a total of 4 Gig only 1.96 or 2 Gig Available. So you may have something with the Single Sided, Double Sided and the processor but I've never looked that deep into RAM - I'd just put the max the motherboard allowed with the amount of the chips it would take to do so and whether it was Registered and Non-registered etc.. I'm thinking this has something to do with the 32 bit XP OS. Not the RAM itself, because it is seen but not how you'd expect it to be seen. System Properties only shows 2 Gig, but System Info shows 4096??? So this might be for another post altogether and some more learning for us Techies. I guess installing RAM isn't as easy as it's always been for me, 4 slots equaled 4 sticks with the max stick being highest amount allowed for mobo, now SS and DS is a factor, processor or possibly the OS?
I'm not 100% sure how to answer your question, but the most I can tell you is that what is seen by the system is a limitation of the CPU itself and not the motherboard. Since the memory controller on athlon64 cpus is on the CPU die itself and not on the motherboard, there isn't much Asus can do about it (unless they made a big mistake somewhere - which I feel is unlikely). That being said, if your motherboard says 4GB on boot, but your OS reports differently, there could be something else limiting you. My understanding is that WindowsXP (32-bit) supports more than 2GB of RAM, but each piece of software is limited to 2GB of memory space. Its a little late and I'm not thinking overly clearly, but I suppose the easiest way to test your theory about the OS is to try a 64-bit OS. Grab one of the free 64-bit linux distros and just boot from the first disc and check the amount of memory available. Usually what happens when you overload the number of banks is you'll still get half of a stick. So I'm surprised you're not seing 2.5 gigs of ram instead of 2 or 4 gigs.
Also in terms of RAM being a factor in building systems, this has actually almost always been a limitation of memory controllers since DDR has been around. AFAIK every Athlon chipset has had the 5 bank limitation until the next stepping of Athlon64 coming out this year. This includes Via KX and KT series, nForce 1,2,3,4... SiS, ALi, you name it. It doesn't often come up because its not often that people were demanding so much RAM from their systems (and a lot of SDR DIMMs and smaller sized DDR DIMMs are single sided). I have a vague recollection that this may have also been an issue on EDO Simms, but thats too long ago for me to remember clearly.
I'm not denying all these facts but it's weird that the system sees it, the OS sees it in System Information (winmsd) but not when you check System Properties (you know right clicking on my computer icon and picking properties - General Tab) shows only 2 Gig. From what I've been reading this would change if it were Windows 2003 Server or XP 64 and of course you are right about linux since it is also 64 bit. I just want to warn people about what was found out about building such a new system to the max the things you can run into. Only problem is my brother is in Louisianna and I'm in PA, it's not my system. I'll have to wait till I can build my own and put XP 64 on it when its completely available via OEM. Thanks for the info guys and keep anything else coming and thanks for stopping by.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316739/EN-US/
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q319043
some were along the line its windows not the board you will find
This would be what was found for the person talking about the processor being the problem. Due to CPU limitation DIMM Modules with 128mb memory chips or double sided by 16 chips are not supported. The ram can not have more than 64mb x 8 chips per side and these chips being double sided fall into that catagory so they will work fine.
It's come down to the OS and what the last person posted is some of what I've been reading - the OS itself places 2 Gig for Kernel and 2 Gig for application space, equalling the 4 Gig of RAM. So we've all learned something here by all of this, and when you expect to see that huge 4096 in your System Properties for bragging rights it will not be there unless of course you have a 64 bit OS possibly. With the links above and some of the other I've seen especially this one will even shed more and better light on the subject.
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxMoreThan2GB.htm
Enjoy.
Thanks for posting this information. I built a similar machine to the one described and have been fighting this memory issue you describe ever since. I was pointed to your blog after I posted my problem on a board. I didn't read your article until today, but here's the machine I built. Interesting how we came to similar conclusions as to the best configuration for the ultimate PC!
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
AMD Athlon64 4000+ @ 2.41 Ghz
4 x 1 GB Corsair PC3200 DDR400
2 x 74 GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm (RAID 1)
1 x 36 GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm
2 x 300 GB Maxtor 7,500 rpm (RAID 1)
ATI Radeon X800 Pro
NEC ND-3500AG
Thermalright XP-90 w/ Vantec 92mm Tornado
Chenbro Aluminum Gaming Bomb II
23" Sony SDM-P234/B
Windows XP Pro SP2
And in response to someone else's comment above, my System Information shows I have 2.75GB of RAM installed. So it does look like it wants to read 1/2 stick. For full details on my problem see:
http://forum.tweakxp.com/forum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=1&MessageID=146783
I'll check back here often so if anyone else comes up with bright ideas or answers, I'd sure love to hear them!
Rob
Rob not sure if you checked out the links I provided it will give you the answers you are looking for. It is OS specific the XP OS sees 4 Gig but not as a total of 4Gig under your System Properties. But if you check your System Information by going to run and typing winmsd you will see that it sees 4096 which is 4 Gig of RAM. With you seeing 2.75 sounds like you may have implemented the 3 Gig switch which can be added to the boot.ini file. Windows breaks it up as 2 Gig for Application Space and 2 Gig for Kernel so I think what you see is the 2 Gig for the Application for the OS. By adding the 3 Gig switch it might then show 3 in System Properties. Follow those links I provided it will mention all of this in more technical terms. I try to type so most layman can understand and try not to be to technical. When XP 64 or if you install Windows 2003 Server Enterprise, or even Linux then it may show all 4 Gig in System Properties. I don't have the system to test this on but any 64 bit OS etc may show you the true total? Thanks for stopping by.
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