Fails to boot with two sticks or DDR333 RAM. OK with either stick on its own.

[Graham]

I have a Gigabyte GA-8PE800 motherboard which I've been using with a single
stick of 512MB DDR333
PC2700 RAM (double sided) for the last year or so. I've just decided to
upgrade the memory so I've bought another stick of 512MB DDR333 PC2700 RAM
but this one's single sided. According to the motherboard manual, I should
be able to include both sticks by putting the single sided one in slot 1 and
the double sided one in either slot 2 or 3.

When I do this, the machine fails to boot (no BIOS screen). If I reset the
CMOS, the machine boots but only recognises 512MB of RAM then next time I
try and boot, it fails again. I've upgraded to the latest motherboard BIOS
(version F8) today.

I've tried moving the RAM around to different slots and either the machine
fails to boot or only 512MB is recognised.

Each stick of RAM works fine when it's on it's own.

Any clues as to what might be wrong?

Gigabyte GA-8PE800 Ultra
1.5GHz Pentium 4
Nothing else special!

 

[DaveW]

The two sticks probably have different native timings that are preventing
them from being used together.

 

[Graham]

The two sticks probably have different native timings that are preventing
them from being used together.

What would be your recommended solution? Buy another stick from the same
supplier as the last and use those two together? I could do this as I could
probably find a use in another machine for the original stick of RAM.

Thanks,

Graham.

 

[Wooducoodu]

manually set the timings in the BIOS and give them a little more voltage
2.6 - 2.8 should do it.

 

[Wooducoodu]

only give the ram more voltage if it still fails to boot or you get errors
after boot (run memtest86). then start at 2.6v and don't go higher than
2.8v. what you set the timings at depends on what your ram is rated. if they
have different ratings set it to the lesser of the 2, though you may have to
relax even those settings a bit for 2 sticks to work.