4GB slow.......2GB fast...Vista Ultimate 64bit installation

[Guest]

Hello

I clean installed Vista Ultimate 64 on my machine and experienced extremely
slow performance across all conditions, including boot, idle, applications.
Almost unusable. I would open taskmgr and see that taskmgr.exe was taking up
one of the cpu cores entirely. To copy a 20mb file would take 5 minutes. To
load the device manager would take 5 minutes. Boot would take a solid 10
minutes. I removed 2 1GB sticks of ram and the system is very responsive and
fast now. Boot time is very quick as well.

Has anyone experienced this? Is there a patch? I'd really like to use all
of my ram since I work my machine quite heavily and would use all of it.

Intel DG965WH board (BIOS 1676)
Intel Core 2 E6300
4GB Crucial Ballistix 4x1
Nvidia 8800GTS 320
Seagate 7200.10 sATA drive
WD raptor
Windows Vista Ultimate x64

Thank you for any help!!!

 

[Guest]

It could be the 2 1-gb modules you took out are bad or of a different speed
then the 2 you left in. Try replacing the 2 still in the machine with the 2
you took out. You could also run tests on the modules taht could help you
determine if they are bad...

 

[Guest]

Hi

I've mixed and matched all of the sticks....they are also all the same PN
from crucial......thanks for the reply though....this appears to be a Windows
Vista problem or maybe motherboard with Vista??

 

[Julie Smith]

From what I've read, many motherboards hate the use of all 4 RAM slots. It
takes a performance hit over a motherboard which only uses 2 RAM slots.

Its one of the main reasons why enthusiasts try to stick to 2 slots. Visit
anandtech's forum (www.anandtech.com) and ask the hardware gurus there.

 

[NotMe]

If the system is capable of using Dual Channel DDR, the placement in the
slots can make a difference as well.
Since it has 4 slots, it is bank 0, slot 1/2 and bank 1, slot 1/2.
One MATCHING pair of sticks of RAM should be placed in bank 0-slot1 and bank
1-slot1,
the other matching pair would go into bank 0-slot 2, bank 1-slot 2.
If you place them in any other configuration, it will disable dual channel
capability.
If all 4 are exactly the same (latency, number of chips, etc) you may need a
BIOS update.
It may be a little confusing, but that is the way it works.
I'd ask the MB manufacturer's tech support.

 

[keepout]

Obviously from the expert replies, no one has ever even tried using 4 gigs of ram in a 32 bit machine.
Yes it's going to be slower. If not impossible to use. I tried several ways with XP, even using some recommended /? switch in the boot settings.To no avail.

1st off a 32 bit machine can't use or see much over 2 gigs ram. So you have 2 dust catchers that you'd be better off selling for what you can get. But remove them before they burn up your machine. With 3 gigs installed, you can see a bit more than 2 gigs. Actually with 2 gigs, you can see a bit more than 2 gigs depending on the sticks.

My 4 gigs and the recommended switch made it even slower and less responsive. Can you say 300 baud modem on a Timex 1000 ?
But I wasn't as lucky. The 4 gigs burned up my P4P. They now just sit in a bag collecting dust. My Vista is fully loaded with 2 gigs, and runs just fine. But even 2 gigs doesn't stop this vista machine from going non-responsive any time I want it to. Hit the explorer top bar twice while it's loading a page... 'Internet explorer not responding', and pagegoes gray. 2 minutes later after it recovers, the page shows, and the gray disappears.
I can get it to 'not responding' any time I want, just hit the page twice. any program.

For that reason alone I still preferred XP. It NEVER went non-responsive, even with a 50 meg image loaded into Photoshop.
all the above refers to a 32 bit machine and XP Pro OS.

You say it's x64. but in another reply you say it's 32 bit.

64 bit should work. I've never had or needed a 64 bit machine, so anything I'd say about 64 bit would be parroting what I've read or heard.Not to be trusted.

One thing missing below.. power supply wattage. I went round & round withHP about upgrading the windows video card. their recommendation was for a card that required a larger power supply than the machine had.
That right there will seriously impair things a mis matched video card with a power supply. Make sure PS has enough power to power the card, andother peripherals.

 

[Cal Bear '66]

Using 4GB RAM here with Vista Ultimate x86 and Vista Business x64, dual boot.
Off the shelf HP AMD 64 X2. x86 recognizes 3.4 GB, x64 recognizes 4+ GB. x86
runs just as smoothly, reliably and fast as x64. No dust collectors here.

--
I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!


Obviously from the expert replies, no one has ever even tried using 4 gigs of
ram in a 32 bit machine.
Yes it's going to be slower. If not impossible to use. I tried several ways with
XP, even using some recommended /? switch in the boot settings. To no avail.

1st off a 32 bit machine can't use or see much over 2 gigs ram. So you have 2
dust catchers that you'd be better off selling for what you can get. But remove
them before they burn up your machine. With 3 gigs installed, you can see a bit
more than 2 gigs. Actually with 2 gigs, you can see a bit more than 2 gigs
depending on the sticks.

My 4 gigs and the recommended switch made it even slower and less responsive.
Can you say 300 baud modem on a Timex 1000 ?
But I wasn't as lucky. The 4 gigs burned up my P4P. They now just sit in a bag
collecting dust. My Vista is fully loaded with 2 gigs, and runs just fine. But
even 2 gigs doesn't stop this vista machine from going non-responsive any time I
want it to. Hit the explorer top bar twice while it's loading a page...
'Internet explorer not responding', and page goes gray. 2 minutes later after it
recovers, the page shows, and the gray disappears.
I can get it to 'not responding' any time I want, just hit the page twice. any
program.

For that reason alone I still preferred XP. It NEVER went non-responsive, even
with a 50 meg image loaded into Photoshop.
all the above refers to a 32 bit machine and XP Pro OS.

You say it's x64. but in another reply you say it's 32 bit.

64 bit should work. I've never had or needed a 64 bit machine, so anything I'd
say about 64 bit would be parroting what I've read or heard. Not to be trusted.

One thing missing below.. power supply wattage. I went round & round with HP
about upgrading the windows video card. their recommendation was for a card that
required a larger power supply than the machine had.
That right there will seriously impair things a mis matched video card with a
power supply. Make sure PS has enough power to power the card, and other
peripherals.

 

[Franco Massyn]

Hi

I see you have an Intel board. Recently when I checked for updated drivers
for my Intel board, I saw that there is also a BIOS update available that
fixes a problem similar to what you described. I've pasted the information
below from the release notes of the BIOS update. Although it seems that this
update does not apply to your board but maybe you should check Intel's site
for an update.

Regards

Franco

PRODUCTS: DP965LT, DG965SS, DG965RY, DG965PZ, DG965OT,
DG965MS, DG965MQ, DQ963FX, DQ963GS (Standard BIOS)
BIOS Version 1676
About This Release:
April 13, 2007
MQ96510J.86A.1676.2007.0413.0149
VBIOS info: Build Number: 1436 PC 14.21 02/05/2007 17:31:04.
SATA RAID info: Intel(R) RAID for SATA - v6.1.0.1002
SATA AHCI info: Version UPSD src 09-13-2006
PXE Nahum info: Intel(R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.42
ME firmware build: 2.0.5.1124 production signed.
New Fixes/Features:
Updated processor support.
Changed the manufacturing SATA Type default to follow customer
default.
Fixed issue where incorrect resource being allocated to PCI/PCIe
devices when ISA_EN bit enabled in the bridge.
Fixed issue where system would run slow with 4 GB of RAM and
certain PCI Express Graphics cards.
Removed an 8 second delay from the ACHI option ROM to speed up
POST.

Obviously from the expert replies, no one has ever even tried using 4 gigs
of ram in a 32 bit machine.
Yes it's going to be slower. If not impossible to use. I tried several ways
with XP, even using some recommended /? switch in the boot settings. To no
avail.

1st off a 32 bit machine can't use or see much over 2 gigs ram. So you have
2 dust catchers that you'd be better off selling for what you can get. But
remove them before they burn up your machine. With 3 gigs installed, you can
see a bit more than 2 gigs. Actually with 2 gigs, you can see a bit more
than 2 gigs depending on the sticks.

My 4 gigs and the recommended switch made it even slower and less
responsive. Can you say 300 baud modem on a Timex 1000 ?
But I wasn't as lucky. The 4 gigs burned up my P4P. They now just sit in a
bag collecting dust. My Vista is fully loaded with 2 gigs, and runs just
fine. But even 2 gigs doesn't stop this vista machine from going
non-responsive any time I want it to. Hit the explorer top bar twice while
it's loading a page... 'Internet explorer not responding', and page goes
gray. 2 minutes later after it recovers, the page shows, and the gray
disappears.
I can get it to 'not responding' any time I want, just hit the page twice.
any program.

For that reason alone I still preferred XP. It NEVER went non-responsive,
even with a 50 meg image loaded into Photoshop.
all the above refers to a 32 bit machine and XP Pro OS.

You say it's x64. but in another reply you say it's 32 bit.

64 bit should work. I've never had or needed a 64 bit machine, so anything
I'd say about 64 bit would be parroting what I've read or heard. Not to be
trusted.

One thing missing below.. power supply wattage. I went round & round with HP
about upgrading the windows video card. their recommendation was for a card
that required a larger power supply than the machine had.
That right there will seriously impair things a mis matched video card with
a power supply. Make sure PS has enough power to power the card, and other
peripherals.