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1705 with BIOS 1.0D not booting with 4Gb but will with 2.5Gb

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1705 with BIOS 1.0D not booting with 4Gb but will with 2.5Gb

Postby getanner » Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:07 am

Hi there,

I've flashed my 1705 to BIOS 1.0D-2308-8A20 and installed 2x2GB @ 667MHz using Samsung Memory.

Using the Boot-Time Diagnostic Screen, I get the following;

...
Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1

VIA VN896 (VN896+VT8237A) R11
FSB 133*4MHz DDR533 CL=4T Single Channel 2T

CPU=1, Cores=2
Genuine Intel (R) CPU T2060 @ 1.60GHz
2815M System RAM Passed
1024 KB L2 Cache
...

The system then hangs.

Using either of the 2Gb sticks on their own, I get the following;

...
Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1

VIA VN896 (VN896+VT8237A) R11
FSB 133*4MHz DDR533 CL=4T Single Channel 2T

CPU=1, Cores=2
Genuine Intel (R) CPU T2060 @ 1.60GHz
1791M System RAM Passed
1024 KB L2 Cache

Kernel Library Version 3.10.00.07
StrongROM Version 3.10 Build _P
...

and the system boots to the OS.

If I have a stick of 2GB@667 and a stick of the orginal 512MB@4200S (again Samsung) installed,

The system reports that I have 2318Mb installed and boots to the OS.

My questions are these;

How do I get the BIOS to recognise that 4Gb has been installed?
How do I get the BIOS to recognise that the memory installed is 667MHz?

What other tweaks is there to get the best out of my system?

Many thanks for advice.

Kind regards,

G
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Re: 1705 with BIOS 1.0D not booting with 4Gb but will with 2.5Gb

Postby hikaru » Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:21 am

What you encounter is a common problem when running a 32bit-OS on a 4GB-machine with shared memory graphics.
My notebook has the same problem.

Why doesn't the bios recognise the 4GB?:
It actually does! But since graphics an AGP use the same adress range like the RAM, you have to substract their size from the 4GB of RAM.
To determine the size of the graphics memory is quite easy. In your case it is 128MB.
The "AGP aperture size" is not so easy to find out. Actually I don't know how. Obviously it is quite large in your case.

Why doesn't the system boot?:
To my experience it does. You just can't see it because the graphics drivers aren't loaded correctly. This only seems to happen on machines with shared memory graphics, 4GB of RAM and a 32bit OS (except Vista Home Premium or higher, maybe with SP1).
I had the effect with XP, Debian and Suse. Another user reported that Vista Home Premium worked fine with 4GB.

Why does you RAM only work at 533MHz?:
I gues that one of your modules only supports 533MHz (most likely the preinstalled 512MB module). If so, all modules will work at the speed of the slowest one.

I recommend you to only use 2 1GB modules (667MHz) to reach the best performance if 2GB is enough. Then they will work in dual channel mode. If you really need more than 2GB install a 2GB and a 512MB/1GB module (both 667MHz). They will only work in single channel mode but it will be by far faster than swapping.
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Re: 1705 with BIOS 1.0D not booting with 4Gb but will with 2.5Gb

Postby getanner » Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:36 am

Thanks for your reply.

I appreciate that having a shared graphics memory allocation would cause the OS to see less than the memory installed.

My problem is that with both 2Gb sticks installed, I do not reach the OS stage at all.

With 2*2Gb sticks installed, the BIOS at POST only sees 3Gb and hangs at the Boot-Time Diagnostic Screen.

With 1*2Gb installed and 1*512Mb, the system boots to the OS.

Trying combinations of using either stick of 2Gb with a stick of 512Mb will let the system boot to the OS and report the correct memory installed (ie 2.5 less the graphics allocation).

My system will not boot past the Boot-time Diagnostic screen with 4Gb installed.

My OS is Vista (SP1).

Kind regards,

Guy
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