[Mark1982]

Techsupportforum! The first place I think of when I have a computer problem, you all seem to be very helpful here. It's been a long time since my last post!

Anyway, I bought 1gb of ram today with the intention of running it in dual channel mode alongside my other 1gb in my Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard.

Unfortunately when I start up my computer, it recognizes that I have installed 2gb, but it doesn't want to run it in dual channel mode. Instead, both sticks seem to be running at single channel 64-bit 800mhz mode, and not dual channel 128-bit 667mhz mode.

Firstly, I should mention that they are different brands of ram. One is PNY, and the other is Kingston. However, the timings and voltages reported by CPU-Z show that they are identical.

Is it common for two different brands of ram to not work together in dual channel mode?

Is it possible that the problem has nothing to do with different brands? Because, I was previously running a cheap no-name unbranded 1 gb stick of ram with my 1gb of PNY branded ram, and they were working happily together in dual channel mode.

One little note to add: This new Kingston ram that I bought seems to be half the size (vertically) of other sticks of ram that I've bought. I was worried when I first saw it - I thought it wouldn't fit correctly in my motherboard! Are these newer kinds of ram? Is it possible that the bios of my motherboard is not detecting it correctly?

Despite this, my computer is running happily and without errors in single channel 64-bit 800mhz mode for both of my 1gb sticks. Hopefully I'm not losing much performance from not running in dual channel mode.

Thanks for any advice!
Mark

 

[Wrench97]

Matched pairs run in dual channel 2 sticks from separate manufacturers will not be matched.

 

[Mark1982]

Matched pairs run in dual channel 2 sticks from separate manufacturers will not be matched.

Do you mean that if the motherboard detects a difference between the manufacturers, then it automatically disables dual channel mode?

I was wondering about this, and was surprised to see my PNY ram work in dual channel with some unbranded no-name ram.

 

[Wrench97]

The chips on the ram stick have to be from the same manufacturer and same type so you got lucky with the unbranded sticks, Remember PNY, Crucial, Kingston only assemble the sticks from ram chips made by manufactures like Micron and half a dozen others pny is close to being unbranded so the chips were the same.

 

[reparent]

Good chance its not working if they are not matched pairs.. Also make sure that your put in your memory sticks in the right DIMMS (not one next to the other).. The Asus M2A-VM uses yellow and black DIMM colors, yet if you put both memory in yellow it will probably not work, one needs to be put in the first yellow DIMM (closer to the CPU) and the other in the first black DIMM.