Try other sticks. You are probably going to be wanting to use double sided. You may have a max of 384mb

I have a similar board set up for 384, I can show you the sticks I used in it. You could try ordering them?

I had to go through a pile of sticks to find the best configuration for 384mb which was max ram.

I found the mobo in question which I thought I had stored with ram installed, unfortunately It was removed. What I remember is this: stick one 256mb double sided stick two single sided 128mb

Max board ram seemed to be 384 and not all sticks matching that description worked on it.

So it is best to get a pile of sticks and start playing around with it.

Almost certainly this is a memory density issue - but to be sure we need to know what chips are on the DIMMs you are trying to use.

Via MVP3 chipset can handle max 128Mb (note the little b - you need to be sharp & consistent on capitalization as chip densities are indicated in bits whereas DIMM capacities are measured in Bytes) per chip. If you go over that, only the first 128Mb will be used. That sounds like what is happening here.

512MB DIMMs by definition have at least 256Mb chips (unless buffered/registered), so will never work at full capacity on a board like this. Underneath that it depends on the number of chips:
- 256MB will work at full capacity with 16 chips only
- 128MB will work at full capacity with at least 8 chips
- 64MB will work at full capacity with at least 4 chips
- 32MB will always work at full capacity

dionb wrote on 2022-09-15, 07:58:

Almost certainly this is a memory density issue - but to be sure we need to know what chips are on the DIMMs you are trying to u […]
Show full quote

Almost certainly this is a memory density issue - but to be sure we need to know what chips are on the DIMMs you are trying to use.

Via MVP3 chipset can handle max 128Mb (note the little b - you need to be sharp & consistent on capitalization as chip densities are indicated in bits whereas DIMM capacities are measured in Bytes) per chip. If you go over that, only the first 128Mb will be used. That sounds like what is happening here.

512MB DIMMs by definition have at least 256Mb chips (unless buffered/registered), so will never work at full capacity on a board like this. Underneath that it depends on the number of chips:
- 256MB will work at full capacity with 16 chips only
- 128MB will work at full capacity with at least 8 chips
- 64MB will work at full capacity with at least 4 chips
- 32MB will always work at full capacity

I can actually confirm that some mvp3 boards can indeed run stable with 256mb sticks. I run 640mb of bga sdram 256 256 128 in my freeway mobos. If I recall though, dropping to 384 can bump bench scores a few points though. Even with a 3+ 600 with 2mb l3

dionb wrote on 2022-09-15, 07:58:

Almost certainly this is a memory density issue - but to be sure we need to know what chips are on the DIMMs you are trying to u […]
Show full quote

Almost certainly this is a memory density issue - but to be sure we need to know what chips are on the DIMMs you are trying to use.

Via MVP3 chipset can handle max 128Mb (note the little b - you need to be sharp & consistent on capitalization as chip densities are indicated in bits whereas DIMM capacities are measured in Bytes) per chip. If you go over that, only the first 128Mb will be used. That sounds like what is happening here.

512MB DIMMs by definition have at least 256Mb chips (unless buffered/registered), so will never work at full capacity on a board like this. Underneath that it depends on the number of chips:
- 256MB will work at full capacity with 16 chips only
- 128MB will work at full capacity with at least 8 chips
- 64MB will work at full capacity with at least 4 chips
- 32MB will always work at full capacity

Ah, now I know the problem.
As far as I know they are all unbuffered - now it makes sense for me.
Also your info about the number chips.

The 512 MB is double sided, but unbuffered, non-ecc
the 256 MB are both single sided, and also unbuffered - non-ecc

Thanks to you I also remember what my dad once told me long time ago.

Thanks - this helps alot

all desktop ram is unbuffered, buffering is for reducing load on memory bus on motherboards with a lot of memory slots, it also adds unwanted latency

Re: Converted registered SDRAM

Some fun info.