The MSI board states that: "Note: PC3200 (DDR400) maximum 4 banks only." How would I know how many banks there is?
You need to get that spec from the RAM manufacture. Most Kingston RAM uses 4 banks.
I'll do some experimenting with lower memory speeds, like setting it to 266MHz instead of 400MHz. A cheap and quick fix is a newer mobo,
perhaps
with Nvidia's nForce2 chipset, apparently it's more tolerant with
memories?
A word of caution with RAM tuning. It's easy to enter a setting that makes the board completely unbootable which then requires a BIOS reset (don't even ask how I learned this) :-p
Yeah.. I know that.. ;) The weird thing is that Memtest86+ verifies every bit of memory as correct, but still the Linux installer barfes with a Kernel panic at some point. I'm baffled.
Anders. ==========
Anders, You can also check with the memory maker for your ram. They should be able to tell you whether the ram is usable in that motherboard/chipset. From what you have described, it appears that the memory is not suitable, since a single stick of 512Mb works without problems. I don't remember if you mentioned the newer ram was dual channel or not, but I'm pretty sure that chipset will not work with dual channel ram.
Check with the memory manufacturer, they can better tell you what their ram will work with. Oh, each memory slot is divided into two banks, so you have two memory slots, thus 4 banks of memory.
Lee
The MSI info say that I should be able to use Dual Channel setup, but I'll do some testing with a lower memory frequency to see if that helps.. Anders.