Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do I need a new display card?
Current hardware:
Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV505 [Radeon X1550 64-bit]
On Sun, Mar 08, 2009 at 03:00:59AM +0000, Rick wrote:
Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do I need a new display card?
Current hardware:
Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV505 [Radeon X1550 64-bit]
That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the "new" memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again?
If so, maybe you need to adjust some memory timing settings in BIOS.
Ray
In article 20090308031754.GA11794@bludgeon.org, Ray Van Dolson centos@centos.org wrote:
That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the "new" memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again?
Yes, that's how I'm running right now.
Rick wrote:
In article 20090308031754.GA11794@bludgeon.org, Ray Van Dolson centos@centos.org wrote:
That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the "new" memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again?
Yes, that's how I'm running right now.
now, try taking out the OLD memory and putting in just the NEW memory. see how it runs that way. if this works, try with the new 4GB as the 0 bank, and the old 2GB as the 1 bank.
also, in the BIOS, check the memory timings, I'd leave them all on 'automatic' or 'default' or whatever the limited choices are in the Intel BIOS, trying to squeeze an extra clock out of CAS or whatever doesn't really help much under the best of conditions and it can destabilize a system under suboptimal conditions.
In article 49B47E99.1090307@hogranch.com, John R Pierce centos@centos.org wrote:
now, try taking out the OLD memory and putting in just the NEW memory. see how it runs that way. if this works, try with the new 4GB as the 0 bank, and the old 2GB as the 1 bank.
Tried that before I posted and got the same results.
also, in the BIOS, check the memory timings, I'd leave them all on 'automatic' or 'default' or whatever the limited choices are in the Intel BIOS, trying to squeeze an extra clock out of CAS or whatever doesn't really help much under the best of conditions and it can destabilize a system under suboptimal conditions.
They should all be on their default settings. But I'll take another look when I get a chance. Thanks.
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Rick ellis@spinics.net wrote:
In article 49B47E99.1090307@hogranch.com, John R Pierce centos@centos.org wrote:
now, try taking out the OLD memory and putting in just the NEW memory. see how it runs that way. if this works, try with the new 4GB as the 0 bank, and the old 2GB as the 1 bank.
Tried that before I posted and got the same results.
I assume the following in this reply: you are using DIMMs, one (or two) cards for 2GB and one (or two) cards for the other 4GB.
1) You probably did this, but until the above reply, it was not clear that this was your memory configuration: make absolutely sure that the memory timings on all your DIMMs are the same. If any one is off by even one in any of the settings, they will not work together. Period.
2) Your answer above was not clear: did the 4GB work by itself without the other 2GB? If so, the above is your problem. If not, you're in deeper guano that you think, BUT:
3) Some motherboards (many) will not accept different size DIMMs at the same time. If yours works with the 2GB alone and the 4GB alone but not both together, that's probably the problem and you can't do it at all on your present hardware.
Also, by "running in 64-bit mode" (previous reply), do you mean that your are running the 32-bit PAE kernel or the x86_64 kernel? Some hardware doesn't seem to like the former, but that's just what I've read here before. (I use the x86_64 kernel....)
HTH
mhr
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of MHR Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 6:20 AM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Memory vs. Display Card
- Some motherboards (many) will not accept different size DIMMs at
the same time. If yours works with the 2GB alone and the 4GB alone but not both together, that's probably the problem and you can't do it at all on your present hardware.
If the motherboard supports dual-channel configs, one might want to take care how one distributes the different mem-sticks in the banks. Eg the 2GB-sticks in bank 1 and 3 and the 4GB-sticks in banks 2 and 4.
YMMV.
In article f4e013870903082220s772af2d7o22c9686d6f1347e9@mail.gmail.com, MHR centos@centos.org wrote:
- Your answer above was not clear: did the 4GB work by itself without
the other 2GB? If so, the above is your problem. If not, you're in deeper guano that you think, BUT:
The 4GB had the same problem with and without the 2GB.
Also, by "running in 64-bit mode" (previous reply), do you mean that your are running the 32-bit PAE kernel or the x86_64 kernel?
It's x86_64.
Rick wrote:
In article f4e013870903082220s772af2d7o22c9686d6f1347e9@mail.gmail.com, MHR centos@centos.org wrote:
- Your answer above was not clear: did the 4GB work by itself without
the other 2GB? If so, the above is your problem. If not, you're in deeper guano that you think, BUT:
The 4GB had the same problem with and without the 2GB.
ok, then you have the wrong 4GB (2x2GB?) sticks. You might review the memory specs for your motherboard, not all DDR2 is the same. http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d975xbx/sb/CS-026567.htm
specifically, you need 1.8-1.9V DDR2 unbuffered DIMMs, requires SPD, 667 and 533Mhz. 2GB dimms must be organized as 8 128Mx8 dimms on each side.
personally, I'd pick my ram from this page http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=D975XBX
the stuff you buy through their guaranteed compatability program WILL work.
On Mon, Mar 09, 2009, John R Pierce wrote: ...
ok, then you have the wrong 4GB (2x2GB?) sticks. You might review the memory specs for your motherboard, not all DDR2 is the same. http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d975xbx/sb/CS-026567.htm
I usually go to the Kingston site to find the proper memory for specific main boards, and get most of our RAM from newegg.com.
Bill
Bill Campbell centos@celestial.com writes:
I usually go to the Kingston site to find the proper memory for specific main boards, and get most of our RAM from newegg.com.
I second this, except that I find Kingston often has the best price for ram, as well as a decent compatability wizard. make sure to click all the way through to 'add to cart' or whatever. Kingston puts a higher price on the 'price comparison' page for some reason.
On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 19:27 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
Rick wrote:
In article 20090308031754.GA11794@bludgeon.org, Ray Van Dolson centos@centos.org wrote:
That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the "new" memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again?
Yes, that's how I'm running right now.
now, try taking out the OLD memory and putting in just the NEW memory. see how it runs that way. if this works, try with the new 4GB as the 0 bank, and the old 2GB as the 1 bank.
also, in the BIOS, check the memory timings, I'd leave them all on 'automatic' or 'default' or whatever the limited choices are in the Intel BIOS, trying to squeeze an extra clock out of CAS or whatever doesn't really help much under the best of conditions and it can destabilize a system under suboptimal conditions.
When you use 4 banks of memory, some boards require slower settings. Tweaking the voltage may help there I guess, but I would opt for the slower settings. I recall that my BIOS chose a slower memory setting when I added 4G to my small server at home that already had 2G.... That system has been rock stable (except for my Sun quad ethernet that had problems with the Xen kernel due to MMIO issues. I solved that by ditching the Sun card and using a vlan capable switch with vlan trunking so that I no longer need so may ethernet interfaces)
Louis
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Louis Lagendijk louis@lagendijk.xs4all.nlwrote:
On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 19:27 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
Rick wrote:
In article 20090308031754.GA11794@bludgeon.org, Ray Van Dolson centos@centos.org wrote:
That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the
"new"
memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again?
Yes, that's how I'm running right now.
now, try taking out the OLD memory and putting in just the NEW memory. see how it runs that way. if this works, try with the new 4GB as the 0 bank, and the old 2GB as the 1 bank.
also, in the BIOS, check the memory timings, I'd leave them all on 'automatic' or 'default' or whatever the limited choices are in the Intel BIOS, trying to squeeze an extra clock out of CAS or whatever doesn't really help much under the best of conditions and it can destabilize a system under suboptimal conditions.
When you use 4 banks of memory, some boards require slower settings. Tweaking the voltage may help there I guess, but I would opt for the slower settings. I recall that my BIOS chose a slower memory setting when I added 4G to my small server at home that already had 2G.... That system has been rock stable (except for my Sun quad ethernet that had problems with the Xen kernel due to MMIO issues. I solved that by ditching the Sun card and using a vlan capable switch with vlan trunking so that I no longer need so may ethernet interfaces)
Louis
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
have you read your technical product specifications? http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d975xbx2/sb/CS-029346.htm it states that the supported memory modules are only 2GB top
Table 4 lists the supported DIMM configurations. Table 4. Supported Memory Configurations DIMM Capacity Configuration (Note 1) SDRAM Density SDRAM Organization Front-side/Back-side Number of SDRAM Devices (Note 2) 128 MB SS 256 Mbit 16 M x 16/empty 4 [5] 256 MB SS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/empty 8 [9] 256 MB SS 512 Mbit 32 M x 16/empty 4 [5] 512 MB DS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/32 M x 8 16 [18] 512 MB SS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/empty 8 [9] 512 MB SS 1 Gbit 64 M x 16/empty 4 [5] 1024 MB DS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/64 M x 8 16 [18] 1024 MB SS 1 Gbit 128 M x 8/empty 8 [9] 2048 MB DS 1 Gbit 128 M x 8/128 M x 8 16 [18] Notes: 1. In the second column, “DS” refers to double-sided memory modules (containing two rows of SDRAM) and “SS” refers to single-sided memory modules (containing one row of SDRAM). 2. In the fifth column, the number in brackets specifies the number of SDRAM devices on an ECC DIMM
So your 4GB module is not supported... you should use 4x2GB modules in order to see an improvement(always using pairs, remember it's dual channel).
cheers
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Victor Padro vpadro@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Louis Lagendijk louis@lagendijk.xs4all.nl wrote:
On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 19:27 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
Rick wrote:
In article 20090308031754.GA11794@bludgeon.org, Ray Van Dolson centos@centos.org wrote:
That sounds pretty strange. Have you confirmed that removing the "new" memory allows you to run in runlevel 5 again?
Yes, that's how I'm running right now.
now, try taking out the OLD memory and putting in just the NEW memory. see how it runs that way. if this works, try with the new 4GB as the 0 bank, and the old 2GB as the 1 bank.
also, in the BIOS, check the memory timings, I'd leave them all on 'automatic' or 'default' or whatever the limited choices are in the Intel BIOS, trying to squeeze an extra clock out of CAS or whatever doesn't really help much under the best of conditions and it can destabilize a system under suboptimal conditions.
When you use 4 banks of memory, some boards require slower settings. Tweaking the voltage may help there I guess, but I would opt for the slower settings. I recall that my BIOS chose a slower memory setting when I added 4G to my small server at home that already had 2G.... That system has been rock stable (except for my Sun quad ethernet that had problems with the Xen kernel due to MMIO issues. I solved that by ditching the Sun card and using a vlan capable switch with vlan trunking so that I no longer need so may ethernet interfaces)
Louis
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
have you read your technical product specifications? http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d975xbx2/sb/CS-029346.htm it states that the supported memory modules are only 2GB top
Table 4 lists the supported DIMM configurations. Table 4. Supported Memory Configurations DIMM Capacity Configuration (Note 1) SDRAM Density SDRAM Organization Front-side/Back-side Number of SDRAM Devices (Note 2) 128 MB SS 256 Mbit 16 M x 16/empty 4 [5] 256 MB SS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/empty 8 [9] 256 MB SS 512 Mbit 32 M x 16/empty 4 [5] 512 MB DS 256 Mbit 32 M x 8/32 M x 8 16 [18] 512 MB SS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/empty 8 [9] 512 MB SS 1 Gbit 64 M x 16/empty 4 [5] 1024 MB DS 512 Mbit 64 M x 8/64 M x 8 16 [18] 1024 MB SS 1 Gbit 128 M x 8/empty 8 [9] 2048 MB DS 1 Gbit 128 M x 8/128 M x 8 16 [18] Notes:
- In the second column, “DS” refers to double-sided memory modules
(containing two rows of SDRAM) and “SS” refers to single-sided memory modules (containing one row of SDRAM). 2. In the fifth column, the number in brackets specifies the number of SDRAM devices on an ECC DIMM
So your 4GB module is not supported... you should use 4x2GB modules in order to see an improvement(always using pairs, remember it's dual channel).
cheers
-- "It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion."
"Todo el desorden del mundo proviene de las profesiones mal o mediocremente servidas"
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Victor seems to have found your problem. But you might want to verify there isn't a BIOS / firmware update for your motherboard.
memtest distributed with most systems is old. One of the memtests was recently updated to for the latest intel chipsets.
Rick ellis@spinics.net writes:
Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do I need a new display card?
Have you tried memtest86?
without a serial console, it'd be hard to see if that's the problem, but it is a good place to start.
Often if you have bad memory the problem doesn't show until you use something that actually uses more of your memory (like starting the GUI)
In article m3vdqkeflz.fsf@luke.xen.prgmr.com, Luke S Crawford centos@centos.org wrote:
Have you tried memtest86?
No, but if that was the problem it wouldn't have failed the same way each time.
I finally got some time to deal with this today. I tried several more things and finally made it work by installing a BIOS update.
Sure feals nice to have that memory installed. ;)
On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Rick ellis@spinics.net wrote:
Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB to 6. When I installed the memory every thing was fine until I went to run level 5. At that point the screen turned to garbage and the system froze. Is there a way to fix this so I can use the memory I bought? Do I need a new display card?
Current hardware:
Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV505 [Radeon X1550 64-bit]
First of all, lots and lots of data "missing" here .....
Secondly, I agree with other posters --> make sure that memtest86+ runs successfully and finds all your memory. Let it run *at least* overnight before accepting the new memory. [Note: Three explicit things that you need to check and report the results of here -- if you'd like more help.]
Third, check your BIOS settings -- particularly w.r.t. VGA memory, memory-hole re-mapping, etc. I'd do this before I'd run the memtests, btw. Does the BIOS see the memory? Is the BIOS configured to map the VGA + PCI + ... (typically up to 1 GB) memory to higher space? Is your MTTR set to Discrete or Continuous? I'd run the Intel Linux Firmware BIOS test to see if the BIOS / Memory are configured and compatible at this point.
Forth, what (precisely) CentOS kernel are you booting?? Does it support greater than 4 GB of RAM?? Does it see all the memory -- both the 6 GB of physical RAM plus the VGA + PCI re-mapped -- e.g., does it see almost 7 GB of memory?? How does the kernel see the memory (e.g., the MTTR block -- which is one of the first things the system reports when it boots up)??
Fifth, after the GUI scrambles the screen, did you kill the session and/or switch to an alternate Virtual Console and review both /var/log/messages and X.org logfiles??
Once, you've got that, you might have a better idea of what's going on ... (and maybe where your problem is ...)
HTH
-rak-
On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 09:16 -0400, Richard Karhuse wrote:
On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Rick ellis@spinics.net wrote:
Since memory has become quite cheap lately I decided to move from 2 GB
...
Forth, what (precisely) CentOS kernel are you booting?? Does it support greater than 4 GB of RAM??
Lots of good suggestions, but this would seem to be a likely cause, and easiest to check. If you are running i386 you need a PAE kernel.
http://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/CentOS5#head-d70935212ce3b7b072b0075c1807a4bd3ea1...
Phil
In article 1236521803.29529.43.camel@poq1.tabb.loc, Phil Schaffner centos@centos.org wrote:
Lots of good suggestions, but this would seem to be a likely cause, and easiest to check. If you are running i386 you need a PAE kernel.
I thought of that. But I'm running 64 bit mode.
-
Bill Campbell -
John R Pierce -
Louis Lagendijk -
Luke S Crawford -
MHR -
Phil Schaffner -
Ray Van Dolson -
Richard Karhuse -
Rick -
Rob Townley -
Sorin Srbu -
Victor Padro