AMD platforms and four (4) DIMMs

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 7:23 pm

Do AMD platforms work with four DIMMs yet? I read somewhere here that there was a problem with that configuration.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 8:12 pm

Yep, they work. However, it is reported that many motherboards drop 5% when the other two slots are filled with RAM.

Best to use 2 large sticks than 4 medium ones.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 8:22 pm

It always \"worked\", before when populating all 4 banks the CPU just set the memory speed down from 400 MHz to 333 MHz. Now it keeps it at 400 MHz, however it still performs slower then just two sticks because of the added capacitance forces slower timings.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:51 pm

It doesnt force slower timings, it forces a 2T command rate, which causes a minimal performance hit, I gained an extra .003 seconds in superpi by going to 4 banks from 2, woohoo!

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:00 pm

if you are inclined to use DIMMs with heatsinks, make sure the slots aren't too close together.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 8:50 am

I found heatspreaders made the temps worse actually >.>

pATCheS · Post by **pATCheS** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:15 pm

939 AMD chips couldn't handle more than two sticks without dropping to 333 up until revision E, aka the Venice core. Haven't heard of any timing issues, but that's not saying much.

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:12 am

I am currently using 4x 512 sticks in my system (NF4, AMD64 3700+(Venice core))

The board auto clocked the memory MHz down from 400MHz to 333MHz, I just went in and set it back to 400MHz. I do agree the system seemes a bit sluggish in some loading scenarios.

But once things load I see no problems. IE, in WoW it takes a few seconds after the loadging bar is full to initially load the game but once I'm in, Ironforge at prime time with 100's of characters on the screen offers no slow downs or juts of loading.