Picky Ram Slots

[Pestilence]

Sense I moved it, I can't seem to get all 3 of my RAM sticks to work. They ALL seem to pass tests individualy, and I can get any 2 of them to work fine though it displays as 3.25GB on general system properties. (They are all Corsair 2gb DDR2 PC800 and compatable with the mobo).

With all 3 working properly, it WAS showing 3.5GB with all 6GB in there. Sense I yanked them out and did not lable what ones were where, I can't find the magical order to put them in to make them work again.

After abit of musical RAM Slots, I can get a system beep out of haveing 3 in, but I get nothing on the screen and I don't hear any windows startup sound either. Any ideas why it's not working? they "SEEM" to all be ok and I recall them being picky about the slots or even the order of the sticks in those slots before. I know it generaly shows as less on system properties, but showing less then 4gb with 6gb in seems alittle odd as well.

[Junfan]

Well for the order no clue. I know in most machine that after two sticks the manufacturers recommend increasing the northbridge by .1 volts. This may help stabilize your machine.

Also, I can only assume you are using a 32 bit operating system. This means you have a 4G mem limit no matter what including video card etc...

Showing 3.25 gigs on a 32 bit machine with a decent video card is normal.

By definition, a 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB).

[Pestilence]

Nice! Very informative.
I suppose I'll throw that other stick into my wife's computer. perhapse it can find use when I get windows 7.

So when selecting an OS, any other effect on what bit you select? other then compatability issues with os over 64?