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I have an old HP xw4600 desktop computer that has been swapping a lot lately (even more after every firefox/chrome etc update) so I thought I keep it alive a little bit longer by doubling it's ram, from 4GB to 8GB. So I ordered 4 pieces of the appropriate PC2-6400 memory modules from aliexpress but these are 2GB in place of the original 1GB modules. The problem is that having 8GB of ram breaks the functionality of my nVidia GT 630 video card. It can do basic stuff but when I fire up some M$ games or compiz with funky animations it almost freezes. Under linux it starts to write cryptic error codes in dmesg, under Win the game crashes and a little yellow icon appears saying that the nvidia driver has crashed but recovered. I do not believe there is a problem with the memory modules, I ran memtest86+ for a pass, it showed no errors and if I pull out two modules (so I have only 4GB again) the videocard start working correctly. Other components (HDD, network card etc) does not seem to be affected. What can I do?

soger
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  • Have you gone into the BIOS and checked if there are any options related to video memory? Also, are you running the latest BIOS? – davidgo Oct 11 '18 at 21:32
  • Yes I have, but there are no options in the bios, all I can do is to disable the card or change it's IRQ. Updating the bios never had any visible change on my previous computers so I didn't try it, but what the heck, I'll try it tomorrow. – soger Oct 12 '18 at 01:10
  • Just as I suspected, updating the BIOS did absolutely nothing. – soger Oct 12 '18 at 19:59
  • Have you read https://superuser.com/questions/56157/why-is-all-my-extra-ram-marked-as-hardware-reserved-in-windows-7#107753 - there are some things which might be useful. Also, do you dual boot, or is it Windows in a VM or what? – davidgo Oct 12 '18 at 20:04
  • For me all the memory is accessible. I dual boot, usually linux, my first thought was to recompile the nvidia kernel module, but that didn't help so I tried windows and as soon as I started the game, flickers started to appear. Also, compiz sometimes says via a systray notification "Framebuffer Incomplete". It's like if opengl wouldn't work, I don't know what's it's business with the ram's size. – soger Oct 13 '18 at 00:23
  • I forgot to mention, there is a guide on my computer's case how to install ram modules, I use all 4 slots which is allowed. – soger Oct 13 '18 at 00:25

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According to this page: https://support.hp.com/ro-en/document/c01683078 with non-HP RAM my motherboard only works with 4GB. Yeah, I should've really checked the page before buying Kingston modules, but who would've thought.

soger
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