That motherboard is seriously flawed! I have the same board, which is a replacement, and the first one wouldn't boot at all with DDR2 mem. The current board is running two sticks of 512MB DDR2 and seems to work OK. I bought two sticks of 1GB from Crucial for that board and it only recognized 512MB in each slot. I pulled two sticks of 512MB from another machine, installed them in the ECS board and they also display as 512. I concede defeat and run it with the two 512s. The two 1GB sticks work just fine in an Intel board running XPPro64. Long story short..... you pays your money, takes your chances, and avoid ECS boards, although I used a couple of ECS boards years ago without problems. The board you are running has a bad rep in some circles.

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It's generally better to manually select your board than relying on the scanner. Even so, the info provided at Crucial is incorrect because they claim your board supports dual channel mode...it does not: http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pr... However, Crucial does state the following about your board: "240-pin DDR2 DIMM Banking: 2 (2 banks of 1)" http://www.crucial.com/store/listpa... If you're exceeding the banking, your RAM won't be correctly recognized.

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i still think density might be relevant. i am not that well up on DDR2 but certainly with older types of ram, if you have 2 sticks of ram of the same number of megabytes, the one with most chips on is most likely to work correctly with more mobos. eg. a 512mb stick with 16 chips will be recognised as 512mb in more computers than a 512mb 8 chip stick, the 8 chip stick has 'denser' ram which can be more of a problem

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"If you have both types of ram slots, you must install the modules in the right slots, and both types cannot be installed at the same time." You can install both types at the same time and it won't hurt either module type but the bios will only recognize one type. "If you have installed ram in the wrong type of slot, the circuits for that slot and the ram are probably fried and will never work again!" They are probably not damaged until you attempt to boot, but once you do that they are definately instantly damaged, and you will probably notice the stink it produces. Installing any module backwards also trashes the slot and the backwards module the instant you boot. It is wise to check more than one place where you can look up which modules will work in your mboard. I haven't seen many mistakes, but both the ones I've heard of or discovered were on the Crucial site.

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Cuffy, I was hoping that someone with direct experience would respond. Thank you very much for confirming my suspicions that despite ECS's specs showing 2 GB, this motherboard really only supports 1 GB; as you stated it's "flawed." I will stick with the way it's running now with 1 GB, because it is very stable. This is my first experience with this model. I've used other ECS motherboards before, and where I can't say I didn't have some level of angst, I always worked out any problem I had in short order. What bothers me is that ECS support doesn't fess up. I asked them point blank which DDR2 memory would yield 2 GB, and they just ignored the question. Instead they simply gave me the proverbial "run around." Thanks again. I - Sandor J

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Sandor It is still unclear to me if you are trying to use both types of RAM at the same time.

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Sandor - Cuffy was probably using incompatible ram. This is a COMMON problem. You CANNOT use one DDR and ONE DDR2 module and have the mboard recognize both types! If both your modules are DDR OR DDR2, and if you haven't done anything else wrong, you probably have the same problem! See response 5! ECS P4M800PRO-M "Comments: This motherboard supports both DDR1 and DDR2 memory, however, not simultaneously. Bank Schema: 2 DDR ram slots, 2 DDR2 ram slots Upgrade Path: Using DDR2 modules: Virtually any configuration up to 2GB can be reached using any combination of Kingston's 256, 512MB, and 1GB modules. Using DDR1modules: Virtually any configuration up to 2GB can be reached using any combination of Kingston's 256, 512MB, and 1GB modules " http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/con...

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Tubesandwires & OtheHill, Just for the record I have never, nor would ever mix DDR and DDR2 on the same motherboard. Response Number 2 clearly states I'm using ONLY DDR2 memory, and judging Cuffy's response, I would bet that he too is NOT mixing DDR and DDR2 memory. I suspect that by now all "do it yourselvers" pretty much know you cannot mix DDR and DDR2. Thanks for all responses.

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Sandor You make a false assumption when you state "I suspect that by now all "do it yourselvers" pretty much know you cannot mix DDR and DDR2. This very thing HAS benn done more than once. Your response #2 may have been clear to you but it wasn't to me. To an uninitiated person they MIGHT interpret the specs to mean 2GB of each. Don't get testy. No one here knows your level of experience. You are probably correct about the board but then again it is still possible the RAM you are using is incompatible for some reason, including but not limited to, chip density. Possibly clearing the CMOS after installing the modules would help. Also, manually setting the RAM in the BIOS may help. ECS has set their default setting to be agressive for better compasion numbers. You may need to back off on RAM timing.

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I am self taught and have been fiddling with computers since 1988, and I have been helping people solve their problems online since 2002, and on this site since about 2005. OtheHill has probably been helping people on this site much longer than that. So have some others who regularly answer. We who regularly answer have pretty much weeded out most if not all of our wrong answers and wrong conclusions long ago, through further experience or knowledge. I have no idea what level of expertise Cuffy has. I answer questions or provide info randomly, when I have the time, and taking that into account, I haven't seen Cuffy's posts in subjects I've looked at or answered before about a week ago. Going by those posts it appears he doesn't always know what he is talking about and has sometimes jumped to the wrong conclusions. Anyone can have a mboard that is initially defective, that's usually when you have problems if you do have problems, though it's quite rare these days, but the odds are very much in favour of there's probably not anything actually wrong with his replacement mboard, and his recognition problems were caused by him trying incompatible ram. We can only go by what the posters tell us and how accurate the info is they provide. We often don't get enough info and have to ask a lot of questions or in my case I may provide a lot of possible scenarios as to what might be wrong. Going by the info you have provided so far, as I have said, if you haven't done anything else wrong that I or OtheHill has mentioned, the most likely thing is one or both of your ram modules is incompatible with the mboard chipset - see the link I pointed to in response 5 - ram density is one factor but not the only one. Have you tried each module by itself? If the second one is not recognized at all when by itself it's certain it's either incompatible or has been damaged by something you did or by some external cause such as an AC voltage spike or surge - the former is much more likely, and either are much more likely than it is actually bad ram. Sometimes each module will work fine by itself, but one will not be recognized when both are installed, or both are recognized but you get memory errors. This can be because the second module isn't 100% compatible, or the first one wasn't, or both, with the chipset, but it only causes a problem when both are installed. Flashing the bios almost always will not help fix problems with ram recognition, unless there is info in the release notes for a bios version that says it will, or info for a previous bios version that says it will that is newer than the bios version you have on the mboard, since newer bios updates virtually always include all previous fixes, and even then the fixes are often for specific maker's models of ram modules. By the way, you should always load bios defaults after flashing the bios to make sure the contents of the cmos part of the bios and what you see in your bios Setup matches the bios version. Flashing the bios usually does not do that automatically, and there are often directions to load bios defaults after flashing the bios on mboard makers web sites or in the mbosard manual but many do not read those and do not do that. If the contents of the Cmos do not match the bios version, you are likely to have problems, but not likely ram recognition ones, or at least not with default settings of the Setup items.

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"Anyone can have a mboard that is initially defective, that's usually when you have problems if you do have problems, though it's quite rare these days, but the odds are very much in favour of there's probably not anything actually wrong with his replacement mboard, and his recognition problems were caused by him trying incompatible ram." I appreciate your assessment of my abilities as a builder and your diagnosis of the problems with that motherboard. Fortunately the vender insisted that I return the board when I was insisting that the memory included in the bundle I purchased was the culprit. I returned their board and they replaced it. The new board was no better than the first. Their memory modules still didn't work. I joined their forum where other builders were enjoying the same problems that I was. Their advice.. give it up, the board is flawed and none of us can get it to work with DDR2. I took their advice and shelved the board along with the supplied memory modules. Just recently I looked at the board and decided to make it or break it. I got it booted with an odd stick of DDR2 memory but it still wouldn't boot with the second stick installed. Since it was running I had Crucial scan it! They recommended and I purchased, two sticks of 1GB DDR2 memory, which I dutifully installed. Lo and behold, it booted nicely, SIW shows the two 1GB sticks of Crucial memory installed, BUT, system properties in the machine only show 1GB total registered, from a combination of two 512MB modules. I complained to Crucial but by the time Crucial got back to me I had swapped out the two 1GB modules to an Intel board running XP Pro64. The modules now registered as 1GB each in both SIW and system properties. I installed the two 512MB modules removed from the Intel board into the ECS board where they worked according to specs. That's where they remain! Suggesting that I installed memory modules in the wrong slots tells me that you haven't installed many memory modules. DDR and DDR2 slots are keyed differently and definetly not interchangable. Suggesting that anyone would purchase two sticks of memory for a machine and order one of DDR and DDR2 for the second is another clue to be leery of the suggestor? Unthinkable! There are 16 responses in this thread and as nearly as I can tell the concensus is there may be a problem with imcompatible ram. That's where I started..... incompatible ram. The board is flawed and doesn't register ram according to specs. Unless you have an unlimited amount of various brands of memory I would suggest you purchase from a source where it can easily be returned or dump the board and cut your losses. Of course if you don't agree with my conclusions you can always get another builder. I didn't get started until 1992 so there are many more experienced people out there if experience is the criteria.

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Looked at the manual for this board. Below is part of a chart for certified, tested RAM. 1 GB DDR2 Apacer ELPIDA E5108AB-5C-E Kingston Infineon HYB18T51260AF-E This means that ECS has run the board sucessfully with those modules.

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Unfortunately neither of those brands was supplied in the bundle from the vendor when I purchased the board. What do I do in that case?

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Don't buy a bundle. The manuals are usually available for download prior to purchase. Cuffy, I fully understand your point. However, I am pointing out that your board will run at least some 1GB stick of RAM. ECS isn't the only manufacturer with that issue. Many of them test RAM for that very reason. The faster the systems get the more likely to have issues with slighly different RAM.

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The fancy printed manual was supplied to the vender by the manufacturer. It was then supplied to me with the motherboard. The modules you specify above are listed in that manual. When the ram supplied didn't work I contacted the vender informing them that the modules supplied are not on the approved vendors list. I was informed the supplied ram was tested on that board, if it didn't work, the board was bad----- return the board. I did! They replaced it! It still didn't work. The vendors forum was full of builders that were reporting that the board was flawed... dump it! To replace the board the second time is pouring good money after bad. I shelved the bundle and built out a machine with an Intel board and Crucial memory. It booted up and works fine to this day. Recently I decided to find the cause of my woes with that ECS board. I got it booted with a stick of 512MB ram from another machine. While up I had Crucial scan it. They recommended two 1GB sticks which I bought! The rest of the story I posted before. The bottom line here is that you can't afford to ship memory or motherboards back and forth because you soon have more invested in the board than it's worth. I also can't keep several thousand dollars worth of memory modules on hand, hoping that one will work. The vendor said their memory was tested and worked in that board. It didn't work here, and it didn't work for a great many more builders. I can't believe the vendor because if I do I'll be nibbled to death by shipping charges to return bad merchandise. The board still doesn't perform as specified in the manual you cited. I have more invested in the machine now than I'll ever get out of it. My question to you is "where do I draw the line and give up?" I answered that question by taking the vender off my list of sources and accepting a machine that performs at 50% of what I was sold, thus cutting further losses. If you have a better answer I could use a good business manager! and for the record...... I'm familiar with manufacturers, Ram, testing, manuals, both printed and online, etc. I have the printed manual supplied by the manufaturer and the online manual that I downloaded with the board arrived. I've been RTFM for many years. In this case, they lie! Things don't work the way the manual says. My next board won't be from ECS!

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I would say it is more likely the vendor you bought the bundle from did NOT test the MBoard. If they had and you installed correctly it would have worked. You are taking this too personnaly. I am not attacking you at all and tubes simply made an observation. Although ECS MBoards are not top shelf by any means they are not the worst around either. Think Jetway for example. Did you read my #15 response? The last paragraph refers to agressive RAM timings. What I meant by that is sometimes a vendor will tweak the default settings too much in order to get good benchamarks. If it were my board I would try running the RAM at lower settings or even underclocking it. That would at least show something. Maybe I missed it but I'm too lazy to look back thru this thread, did either of you that have this board try running just ONE - 1GB stick, to see what happens?

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Cuffy It sounds like you had a nightmare of an experience with that board. I have not personally had any mboard not work with ram that was listed as definately compatible, and I haven't heard of anyone who confirmed they had compatible ram having that problem on these forums, or other sites, either, although sometimes the original poster who had been using the wrong ram never lets us know the result when they did get ram confirmed to be compatible. "Suggesting that anyone would purchase two sticks of memory for a machine and order one of DDR and DDR2 for the second is another clue to be leery of the suggestor? Unthinkable!" We have heard of all sorts of people doing all sorts of things that don't make any sense to us that they could easily have avoided if they done a little reading/research. It is more difficult, but certainly not impossible, to install DDR ram in a DDR2 ram slot or visa versa because the slots are the same length, or to install any DIMM ram in a slot backwards that is the right length - even if it isn't all the way down in the slot it will make good enough contact with the contacts in the slot to fry both the ram and the slot instantly when you attempt to boot. Cuffy and Sandor Many ECS mboards were/are actually made by Hsing Tech, who sell their mboards retail as PCChips mboards, and also sell them wholesale to many other vendors including ECS, who sell them retail as the vendor's model. You may have heard some PCChips models have serious flaws. The quality of Hsing Tech /PCChips mboards varies from crap to as good as or better than similar mboards. One thing they are well known to do is to use the cheapest possible flash chips they can for the bios - they are more likely to fail physically when you attempt to flash the bios. Hsing Tech mboards virtually NEVER have the model number printed directly on the mboard. If they are sold under a vendor's brand name they may have a stuck on label with the vendors model number, or not. If it is actually an Hsing Tech made mboard, it does NOT have the ECS model number printed directly on the mboard.

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