I was recently given 2 sticks of pc3200 corsair RAM, it was high performance gaming RAM, and installed into my Biostar P4M80-M4. I checked and this motherboard can run Dual Channel, but cpu-z says it is running single channel, at 200mhz. Everest says it is running at 200mhz also. Before this I had 2 sticks, a 256 mb stick and a 512 mb stick, both pc2700. Those were ran in single channel mode ofcourse.
I installed the p4 3.0E and this RAM at the same time. Booted it up, went fine.
I was told it automatically would go into dual channel, but it hasn't. I am not sure how to turn it on, I checked BIOS and I didn't see anything about dual channel mode. I am hoping I won't have to flash my BIOS or whatever, because I heard 1 in 10 fail and screw up the mb.
Help would be appreciated. Thanks
You don't need "high performance gaming RAM" in that board because it's not a high performance board. There is nothing to 'enable' for dual channel mode to kick in...you just have to install a matched pair of RAM & it kicks in automatically. The BIOSTAR site lists one BIOS update, but it doesn't explain what it fixes. Personally, I'd have no problem flashing the BIOS, but that's up to you. Have you installed the latest 4-in-1 chipset drivers?
Like I said, it was *given* to me lol :P Anyway, yeah Ill do that 4-in-1 chipset driver thing. Maybe thatll amke it work out. Only reason I told about the "high performance gaming RAM" was because I didn't know if that mattered or not.
If you have more than two RAM slots you may not be configuring the RAM correctly. Refer to the manual, which you can DLoad if unavailable.