More Ram= Slower?

[Smi77y]

I'm a little confused, I bought another 512 mb ram making my total 1.5 gigs, which consists of 3 sticks of 512 ddr400 (pc3200). With the 1 gig of ram I had in my computer I was running everything at medium settings, with a athlon 64, 2800+ and a 6600gt. I was hitting about 50-80 fps. But with the new ram it goes to about 30 fps and never really goes over 40, now obviosly something is wrong. Does anyone else know of this problem? any help is super appreciated.

It is the same stick of ram. corsair valueselect. good stuff btw (when it works right)

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

You have to remember that, by adding a third stick you are no longer using dual chanel, this will slow the access of RAM. What you have got now, is more of the RAM meaning that you PC will become less laggy, etc. To get your pc back to dual chanel you would have to add another 512 MB of RAM as a fourth stick.

[Smi77y]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Well, guess I might be returning this, I only have 3 slots... bummer, didn't know that.

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Yes, what the pc can do is, if there are an even number of cards in there, it can, basically get data off both of the cards at the same time, this virtually can get twice as much information on the same time. For you to keep your dual chanel and to get more RAM you would have to use 2 x 1GB sticks.

[Smi77y]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Well thanks for your help, it's not like BF2 was running bad just greedy I guess. Appreciate the quick response.

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Thats ok, pitty you mb doesnt have 4 slots that way you could have got another 512 and had the dual chanel and 2GB of RAM.

[BH|Recon]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

u never did run dual on that mobo... by adding a 3rd stick u lowered your FSB to 333 from 400.. it has nothing to do with dualchannel or not.. as that cpu is a 754 slot... afaik no motherboards were made that support dual channel and 754...

[Professor]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Yeah Athlon boards with 3 slots are mostly like that; you can really only use two of the slots. Definitely go for a dual channel, 4 DIMM slot mobo next upgrade.

[WickedSlammy]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Hey there buddy just read about your problem.Seems you have a older athlon 64. First off, that mobo doesnt support dual channel at all. This is why it only has 3 slots. Only on the new "venice" and "San Diego" core athlon 64s can you truley run dual channel at ddr400 speeds. They had problems with the older athlon 64s trying to run dual channel, they would drop the memory speed down to 333mhz no matter what memory you put in. So you didnt disable dual channel because you never had it to begin with. Also, dual channel has been shown not to make as big a difference on AMD as it does on a Intel system so dont worry yourself about it. What you need to do was use a lil program called CPU Z, google for it it will come up, and that will tell you what speed your memory is runnning at along with the timings and what not. I would run it with the memory you orginally had in, take note of the settings, then add the extra memory and see what happens. You can then go from the as to why it is running slower.

[T1no]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

You have to remember that, by adding a third stick you are no longer using dual chanel, this will slow the access of RAM. What you have got now, is more of the RAM meaning that you PC will become less laggy, etc. To get your pc back to dual chanel you would have to add another 512 MB of RAM as a fourth stick.

i have 3 slot and i have 512 for each slot = total of 1.5 gig
i have dual chan

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

ou could only have dual chanel with 2 or 4 sticks?? so is it possible to have it with 3? And just to ack a question i have an Athlon 64 3000+ and my mobo has 3 slots.. so this means that it prob wont be able to have dual chanel?

[Berrern]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

The number of slots doesn't determine dual channel compatability/support.

My previous motherboard, the Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Socket A) had 3 slots, yet supported Dual Channel.

If two of the slots are coloured differently, there's a good chance it supports dual channel. On my A7N8X, 2 slots are blue (for dual channel) and one is black.

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Ok kool, but does dual chanel work with 3 cards? or only 2 or 4?

[glasseye]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

just get two 1gig sticks. problem solved.

[Smi77y]

Re: More Ram= Slower?

Thanks for all your help, I ended up returning it to newegg. Game still runs fine at around 70 fps on medium.

By the way if any of you wanted to know I have a K8N mobo.