a couple of issues [ram & GPU]

[Psycho-Designs]

Hello again,

I've solved my previous problems with the PSU and CPU. now the new PC is up and running. a couple of issues though. Sorry for sounding too stupid :

- I've heard from some that XP 32-bit can only recognize 3 GB of ram.. and from others 4 GB.. I've installed the 32.bit version till I get the XP 64-Bit version.. but for now, it is only recognizing 2.75 GB.. is that normal or should I be concerned about the Ram itself..

- I think I'm having overheating issues or something.. A game just crashed once [Bioshock on max res] and another time I have so much going on [installing a program and running one that was working with 6million polygons] when it just closed everything suddenly

I've got Nvidia MonitorView but I don't understand what all the numbers and red boxes mean. here is a screen shot:


My specs:
Q6600
Evga E-GEFORCE 8800GT Superclocked [only one GPU]
Evga Nforce 780I
Thermalright ULTRA-120 Extreme 6 Heatpipe Cooler [with a 120mm fan]
Corsair CMPSU-620HX 620W ATX Triple 12V 50A 24PIN ATX Modular Power Supply
Antec P182 Atx Black Mid Tower Case [with 4 120mm fans]
OCZ Platinum XTC PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800
2x Western Digital SE16 500GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB

PS: the fan mounted on the heat sink is a regular fan, thus it is not connected into the normal CPU fan plug on the mobo because the fan is 3 pins while the mobo's cpu fan plug is 4 pins with a different layout. so I just pluged it into a normal 3pin fan socket.

Thanks for any help [again]

[sswilson]

The amount of memory seen by 32bit XP varies between different motherboard/gpu combinations. 2.75 Gig is the lowest I've heard of, but yours isn't the only one I've heard of at 2.75 so I'd say that your memory is fine.

As far as your crashing is concerned, according to the OCZ page here OCZ Technology | Products | Memory | OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum 2GB Edition looks like your memory normally should run at 2.1v and is guaranteed up to 2.2v.
In your screenshots it shows your memory running at 1.85v so that might be the cause of your crashing rather than overheating.

[Psycho-Designs]

Does that mean I have something defective [mobo or PSU]? or is it just a matter of setting something up?
it is probably a power issue since all the boxes under Voltages are red [none standard voltage] which might be causing the couple of red boxes under bus speed

[sswilson]

Nope it's not defective. It's a common issue with newer DDR2 memory sticks. The original DDR2 spec called for 1.8v and motherboards set that automatically. you have to go into bios to change the mem voltage up to what the memory requires. (Just be glad you were able to boot... some memory has a hard time booting at 1.8V and requires the use of some cheaper ram to get the bios settings right... :) ).

[enaberif]

Theres no real need to get 64bit unless you have MORE than 4gb as Windows will just allocate more to itself than if you had 32bit.

[Matty D]

The way the 32 bit addresses the ram is a bit confusing. It will address say 3.2GB but it then takes the 512mb of video ram and subtracts that from the address space. That is how your ending up at 2.7GB.

From what I know 64bit will take full advantage of 4GB of ram just fine. It doesn't need more but can easily use more.