I recently added a 1Gb stick of patriot ram (PEP1G3200LL) to my existing PEP5123200LL. Bios will recognise each stick individually as 400Mhz but together only as 333Mhz. In "check it diagnostics" the test failed "Memory allocation failed"
Again running either stick alone then no errors seen.
The specs on the MB (Chaintech vnf3 250) says good up to 2Gb mem.
I have the 1gb stick in the first slot and have tried slot 2 and 3 with the 512 stick no differences seen.
I updated bios to current version (6.0), no difference there either. Do i have to adjus the setting in bios? right now they are all on auto setting.
I am not very familiar with all the different OC settings involved so i haven't changed anything yet.

Here is the report from CPU-Z

One thing i am confused abotu is why the SPD is showing 2 frequencies for the 512 Mb ram which I pasted below.

Memory SPD
--------------------

DIMM #1

General
Memory type DDR-SDRAM
Manufacturer (ID) PDP Systems (7F7F7F7F7F020000)
Size 1024 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3200 (200 MHz)
Part number
Manufacturing date Week 00/Year 00

Attributes
Number of banks 2
Data width 64 bits
Correction None
Registered no
Buffered no

Timings table
Frequency (MHz) 200
CAS# 2.0
RAS# to CAS# delay 3
RAS# Precharge 2
TRAS# 5

DIMM #2

General
Memory type DDR-SDRAM
Manufacturer (ID) (0000000000000000)
Size 512 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3200 (200 MHz)
Part number
Manufacturing date Week 00/Year 00

Attributes
Number of banks 2
Data width 64 bits
Correction None
Registered no
Buffered no

Timings table
Frequency (MHz) 166 200
CAS# 2.0 2.5
RAS# to CAS# delay 3 3
RAS# Precharge 3 3
TRAS# 7 8

CPU-Z version 1.31.

CPU(s)
Number of CPUs 1

Name AMD Athlon 64 2800+
Code Name NewCastle
Specification AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 2800+
Family / Model / Stepping F C 0
Extended Family / Model F C
Brand ID 4
Package Socket 754
Core Stepping DH7-CG
Technology 0.13 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, Extended MMX, 3DNow!, Extended 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, x86-64
CPU Clock Speed 1808.8 MHz
Clock multiplier x 9.0
HTT Bus Frequency 201.0 MHz
L1 Data Cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Instruction Cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Cache 512 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 1808.8 MHz (Full)
L2 Location On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic yes
L2 Bus Width 128 bits



Mainboard and chipset
Motherboard manufacturer
Motherboard model nForce3,
BIOS vendor Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS revision 6.00 PG
BIOS release date 09/16/2005
Chipset nVidia nForce3 250 rev. A1
Southbridge nVidia nForce3 MCP rev. A2
Sensor chip ITE 8712

Graphic Interface AGP
AGP Status enabled, rev. 3.0
AGP Data Transfer Rate 8x
AGP Max Rate -1x
AGP Side Band Addressing supported, enabled
AGP Aperture Size 128 MBytes



Memory
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 1536 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 164.4 MHz
FSB:DRAM CPU/11
CAS# Latency 2.0 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 3 clocks
RAS# Precharge 3 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 7 clocks
Bank Cycle Time (TRC) 10 clocks
DRAM Idle Timer 16 clocks
# of memory modules 2
Module 0 PDP Systems DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 1024 MBytes
Module 1 DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes



Software
Windows version Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
DirectX version 9.0c

The nForce3 will automatically downclock DDR400 RAM to DDR333 speed under certain configurations. You may have to simply go into the BIOS & manually set the RAM speed.

From your manual:

"The DDR SDRAM memory system consists of three DIMMs. The first bank
supports up to 1GB of memory, and the second and third ones together support up to
1GB of memory in total. We strongly suggest that you install DRAMs in either
DIMM1 + DIMM2 or DIMM1 +DIMM3 slots. Installation in DIMM2 + DIMM3
slots is only allowed in single -sided module."

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Thanks!
I went into bios and changed the RAM speed to 200MHZ, and 2,3,2,5 settings suggested by patriot, now when booting it reports as 400, but in "check it diagnostics" still getting the same error.
What is the best program to benchmark/test memory?

In CPU-Z under SPD it is still reporting the 512 memory as the same settings as listed in the first post with 2 frequencies 166Mhz 2,3,3,7 and 200Mhz 2.5,3,3,8. What is the SPD all about in the first place?

SPD (Serial Presence Detect) is the info that's programmed into a small chip on the RAM module. This is what the BIOS looks at to automatically configure the RAM settings. If you look at the info on the SPD tab in CPUZ, you should have different timings listed for 133, 166, or 200MHz...all that is showing is what's programmed into the chip, not the speed that the RAM is actually running at.

Click on the Memory tab...that will tell you how the RAM is actually configured in your system

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