Asus P4P800 Deluxe and Dual channel DDR

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November 5th, 2003, 02:21 AM
Silverman

Asus P4P800 Deluxe and Dual channel DDR

I just got a P4P800 Deluxe revision2 motherboard along with 2.4 ghz 800 FSB P4 with 1024 Ram (4 sticks of matching Kingston DDR400 Samsung branded memory Certified by Asus to work in Dual Channel) The system runs great and according to Asus should run well in Dual channel. Here in lies the problem, getting the board to run the memory in Dual Channel. According to Asus FAQ's at POST the screen is supposed to indicate the mode the memory controller is running in I.E. single or dual channel, it does not. I have searched the CMOS settings up and down and sideways looking for any memory setting I have overlooked. If anyone has this board or similar like the P4P800 or P4C800 and has Dual Channel DDR working could you give a clue as to what I might do to get the same?
Thankyou in advance.
November 5th, 2003, 06:42 AM
NooNoo

Would it not mention it in the user manual as well?
November 5th, 2003, 09:38 AM
Diver01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silverman

I just got a P4P800 Deluxe revision2 motherboard along with 2.4 ghz 800 FSB P4 with 1024 Ram (4 sticks of matching Kingston DDR400 Samsung branded memory Certified by Asus to work in Dual Channel) The system runs great and according to Asus should run well in Dual channel. Here in lies the problem, getting the board to run the memory in Dual Channel. According to Asus FAQ's at POST the screen is supposed to indicate the mode the memory controller is running in I.E. single or dual channel, it does not. I have searched the CMOS settings up and down and sideways looking for any memory setting I have overlooked. If anyone has this board or similar like the P4P800 or P4C800 and has Dual Channel DDR working could you give a clue as to what I might do to get the same?
Thankyou in advance.

I have this board and to be honest, I never paid much attention to that. I usually leave the splash screen up when it boots. I do know for a fact that it is running in dual channel mode. I will dig deeper when I get home...

Are you clearing the splash screen when you boot it?

Specs:

P4 2.6C HT
X2/256 Corsair PC3500 LL
ATI Radeon 9800PRO
2 IBM deathstars in Raid 0 mode.. (Yes I live dangerously)
SBLiveZS THX Certified..:)
November 5th, 2003, 09:58 AM
DocPC

In the bios there is a section to turn off the splash screen (can't remember where off the top of my head). Upon post, it will display the CPU, count the RAM and say either the memory runs in single channel, or the memory runs in dual channel.
November 5th, 2003, 11:45 AM
Silverman

Splash screen is turned off at this point to see the POST results. Pause /Break key will halt the progression so as to view the text as it boots:
AMIBIOS (C)2003 American Megatrends, Inc.
ASUS P4P800 ACPI BIOS Revision 1009
CPU : Intel (R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHZ
Speed : 2.40 GHZ
Press DEL to run setup
Press <F8> for BBS POPUP
Checking NVRAM..

1024MB OK

No indication here of single or dual channel.

Thanks in advance.
November 5th, 2003, 12:04 PM
Silverman

Here's what ASUS has to say:
To tell which mode the memory controller hub is working on, simple press the TAB key to skip the full-screen boot logo while booting the system up. The POST screen as below will show up to state the frequency and the mode the memory controller hub is working on.
Dual-Channel Mode:
ASUS xxxxx ACPI BIOS Revision xxxx
CPU : Intel (R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU x.xxGHz
Speed : x.xx GHz

Press DEL to run Setup
Press for BBS POPUP
DDR Frequency xxxMhz, Dual-Channel, Linear Mode
Checking NVRAM..

Single-Channel Mode:
ASUS xxxxx ACPI BIOS Revision xxxx
CPU : Intel (R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU x.xxGHz
Speed : x.xx GHz

Press DEL to run Setup
Press for BBS POPUP
DDR Frequency xxxMhz, Single-Channel or Virtual Single-Channel
Checking NVRAM..
November 6th, 2003, 12:11 AM
Silverman

Well, after about 20 minutes on the phone with an ASUS rep I finally got Dual Channel DDR working properly and the bios POST screen displays it properly.
In the event anyone else needs the info you have to have all the memory settings in BIOS set to AUTO (which they should be by default but...) apparently manually configuring all the timings as they are defined by the manufacturer of the memory seems to turn the feature off on this particular board.
December 25th, 2004, 03:02 AM
whiterose0818

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silverman

I just got a P4P800 Deluxe revision2 motherboard along with 2.4 ghz 800 FSB P4 with 1024 Ram (4 sticks of matching Kingston DDR400 Samsung branded memory Certified by Asus to work in Dual Channel) The system runs great and according to Asus should run well in Dual channel. Here in lies the problem, getting the board to run the memory in Dual Channel. According to Asus FAQ's at POST the screen is supposed to indicate the mode the memory controller is running in I.E. single or dual channel, it does not. I have searched the CMOS settings up and down and sideways looking for any memory setting I have overlooked. If anyone has this board or similar like the P4P800 or P4C800 and has Dual Channel DDR working could you give a clue as to what I might do to get the same?
Thankyou in advance.

i seen the same problem with my board....i assumed it was becqause i started out initially with one stick of ram....i added a stick of identical ram and benchmarks stated that i was def. in dual channel, though not being displayed in POST.....when i did my first format with the two sticks installed, it showed the dual channel linear blah blah blah.....all i got fer ya....
December 31st, 2004, 01:01 PM
Bratwurst

I have the exact same motherboard and memory issue. My question is, do I put both sticks on the blue slots, or one in the blue slot and one on the black slot? I've lost my manual which probably would answer that question.
December 31st, 2004, 01:25 PM
hudsonsmith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bratwurst

I have the exact same motherboard and memory issue. My question is, do I put both sticks on the blue slots, or one in the blue slot and one on the black slot? I've lost my manual which probably would answer that question.

http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock...800_deluxe.pdf
See pages 2-11 & 2-12
December 31st, 2004, 01:49 PM
Bratwurst

Thanks!

I have them in the blue slots, like it says to. I also updated this morning to the latest bios. Still have the issue.

So I opened my case up and looked at the dimms. I bought them both from crucial.com, and they are both 512 sticks of pc3200. Yet one has the black peices on both sides of the stick, and the other has them on only one side. So they are the same size but different?

I looked at crucial's ordering site and they list the memory part number with only the first set of numbers that are identical on both of my sticks. The number is CT6464Z40B, shown here: http://www.crucial.com/store/MPartsp...SPN=CT6464Z40B. But they don't list a number on each dimm that comes after that which is different.

So are my sticks not identical and not available for dual channel? I feel like I got screwed, I went to the manufacturer who I had bought the first stick from, and got the one with the exact same part number but I got a stick that looks different.
December 31st, 2004, 02:22 PM
Bratwurst

Quote:

Originally Posted by whiterose0818

i seen the same problem with my board....i assumed it was becqause i started out initially with one stick of ram....i added a stick of identical ram and benchmarks stated that i was def. in dual channel, though not being displayed in POST.....when i did my first format with the two sticks installed, it showed the dual channel linear blah blah blah.....all i got fer ya....

Quick question - what benchmark tests do you run? I have never run one before but would like to.

I bought this extra stick so that HL2 and Doom3 would play better on my system and now I am curious if just adding the memory at the single rate is not helping much?
January 21st, 2005, 07:15 AM
*I*KEG

I am looking into the linear mode aspect of the P4P800 deluxe board. To get your Mushkin to run properly try this. Contact Mushkin and get the Bios speed settings for your memory. Cass latency ect. I could not even get my board to run unitil I had these setting correct. Do not use the AUTO setting. I actually thought I had bad sticks and stabbed some cheaper memory in. When I contacted corsair they told me because of the low latency of my ram that I needed to set the bios. Not only did this correct my problem, the performance was quite drastic. The RAM GUY from corsiar told me running the bios in auto was a waste of good memory. He promptly emailed me the proper settings for my ram and since I am a system builder for gaming machines, has done so for all the the current systems I have built. Kegger