[CentOS] Memory vs. Display Card

Mon Mar 9 22:05:07 UTC 2009
Rob Townley <rob.townley at gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Victor Padro <vpadro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Louis Lagendijk <louis at lagendijk.xs4all.nl>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 2009-03-08 at 19:27 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
>> > Rick wrote:
>> > > In article <20090308031754.GA11794 at bludgeon.org>,
>> > > Ray Van Dolson  <centos at 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 at 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
>
>
> --
> "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 at 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.