Hi,

I have been on E-bay and have found a 1GB Stick of DDR PC3200 RAM and have come across the following message:

COMPATIBILITY NOTE: Please Check Hi-Density Compatibility.

Buyer is responsible for checking compatibility before bidding. With incompatible motherboards, this ram may read as 512MB or may not read at all.

How do I find out if my motherboard is compatible with HD ram? (Would SiSoft Sandra or CPU-Z say?)

According to CPU-Z my mobo is a ECS 661FX-M (V1.0B) or ECS 661FX-M Deluxe (V1.0) with a SiS-661FX Chipset and a SiS-964 Southbridge

Thanks ,

atyndall

Edited January 17, 200917 yr by atyndall

Your mobo will support 16 chip DIMMs, so if they are 32 chip DIMMs then forget it. So they are talking about the chipsizes .

I don't quite understand what you mean, here are the techinal specs of the RAM:

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:

CONDITION: Brand New

SIZE: 1GB (1024MB)

SPEED: PC3200 400Mhz DDR Memory (Backwards Compatible with PC2700 and PC2100)

CHIP

CONFIGURATION: 128x64

CHIP DENSITY: 128x4 (High Density)

VOLTAGE: 2.5V

CAS LATENCY: 3

Unbuffered, Non ECC, Non Registered

184 Gold-Plated Pins, SPD Support

On the page it says my chipset is supported, but I have been reading on the internet about how chipsets can be supported but the motherboard is not, but I think my mobo might be supported because my mobo goes hand in hand with the chipset (mobo: SiS-661, chipset: SiS 661FX) Can anyone clarify that or help in any way?

have you checked the manual for your motherboard? that should tell you

There are 8 chips of 128MB each, normaly that would be 16...

rendrag got the point there .

Why bother anyways? Even the very best deals I could find on ebay (usually high density RAM) aren't significantly cheaper than the normal stuff at my normal online stores (especially when most of these ebay sellers overcharge on shipping - sometimes shipping costs more than the item). On 1GB DDR2 800 sticks, I could save about 20$.

Is it worth it to risk having (no name) RAM that won't work or won't be compatible, might be harder to RMA (or get exchanged under warranty should anything happen), might not work in the next system (that next board might not be compatible with it - or would restrict your board selection very much) and such, just to save 20$ (which isn't that much $ considering how much the entire PC costs e.g. 20$ saved over a 1500$ PC)?

The local shops (or good online stores) have a good reputation, good quality products from most major and reputable manufacturers, have good warranty (easy to RMA and will honor their warranty), are subject to BBB complaints/small claims court and all that, and have decent pricing for the most part (might be different in other some countries though)

thanks for the help