Have 2 Gigs of memory, would like to add more: need advice?

[cmsmith]

Hello,

I currently have an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe with two 1 gig sticks of memory for a total of two gigs. I'm running a 4400+ X2 CPU.

I recently decided I wanted to upgrade the memory a bit so I purchased a stick of 1 gig memory. I was hoping I could run 3 gigs of memory but apparently that wasn't meant to be. I plugged in the memory and immediately noticed I was running in Single Channel mode with just 2.5 gigs of memory.

Question: Why did this happen? Can I not run 3 gigs of memory and get dual channel? What would be the best way to do this? Can I purchase two sticks of 512k of memory and plug memory into all 4 slots to get 3 gigs of memory (I already have 2x1gig memory sticks for 2 gigs)? Or, would I just be better off getting another gig stick of memory and plugging all four slots up for 4 gigs? Is that possible to do? I would rather have 3 gigs or memory as I really don't want to spend the money on 4 gigs plus I don't need that much. Also, any thoughts on mixing the memory manufacturers?

I've looked in the mobo's manual. Other than saying I can use 256 meg, 512 meg, and 1 gig memory sticks, it doesn't really say much else as to what configurations I can stick these in. Thanks!

[DELETED]

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[skrubol]

When using more than 2GB of RAM you must be ready to fight off error messages unless you are beta testing Windows Vista Beta 2 x64 edition. The reason is that 64bit editions can hold 1TB (500GB) of RAM while 32Bit is only meant to run 2GB max. I have had some luck with 2.5GB on and AMD Athlon 64 3500+ but nothing else. Also Dual channel RAM must be at an even number and the combos that are most common for DC are at http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/MSI/105551/105551mvr5.shtml
I reccomend waiting for a viable 64Bit Windows, or if you must have more RAM then get 4GB.
Regards
Gabe

Are you just trying to confuse people with incorrect math as well as bad data? Ok, let me address the innacuracies one by one.
32 bit addressing allows for 4GB of RAM, not 2. 32 bit NT based Windows (2000 and XP) can address 3-3.5 GB because of hardware addresses that use up to a GB at the end of the address space.
Also, to run more than that, using Vista is not necessary. 64 bit linux has been around for years, and many here (including myself) are running 64 bit Windows XP.
1TB = 1024GB not 500GB.
You could run 3GB of RAM in DC by using 2x1GB and 2x512GB.

[GottaLoveAMD]

Skrubol, you forgot that if you're a hard drive company 1TB=1000GB, etc. I wonder why they'd count it like that? ;) :P

[Am486DX100]

Because the old men in charge at that time rounded 1024 off to 1000 since it it so SMALL that it WON'T make a DIFFERENCE.

Well we are talking COMPUTERS.......I NEVER understood that concept.

Now I'm not sure if that was at the bit, byte or Megabyte level. If that was at the MB level they should have corrected it. It must have been a rounding erroring :?: :shock:

[GottaLoveAMD]

I was joking that I didn't know the reason. The reason (IMO) is that the drive companies wanted to be able to report higher capacities than the standard system. Other than them, everyone else uses the 2^x system of determining capacities.

[skrubol]

Actually, if you think about it, it kinda makes sense that Hard drive manufacturers would use decimal rather than binary multipliers. Clock speeds are always in decimal and bandwidths are almost always in decimal as well as they depend upon clock speeds. Solid state memory is almost always 2-based. It uses binary addressing. Hard drives use physical addressing, so like clock speed, are not tied to binary.
Remember, k, M, G, T, etc are used outside of the computer world as well.