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Problems with 4gb ram

nargot

By nargot,
in OSx86 10.4 (Tiger)

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nargot
nargot
Posted
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update 5th octoberupdate 24 Sep

uptime 10 days, and no random kernel panics

 

-- solution is to disable JMicron controller in BIOS for full system stability, hope this helps all

 

user rgb: has suggested disabling the JMicron controller and removing all PCI cards to achieve fully working stability with >3 gb ram. I'll turn mine off tonight and swap in a sata burner as the optical drive.

---------------------------------------------

 

I've got some fantastic hackintosh systems setup, all stable and what not. So i tried to install 4gb ram in both my machines and have encountered problems.

 

Equipment

 

mobos: Gigabyte 965-DS3 and 965-DQ6

cpus: e4300 and e6300

ram: paired 2gb ram packs (3 different brands) ddr2 800

OS Jas 10.4.9 both manually and Jas upgraded from Jas 10.4.8 ppf1.

 

 

When a single pair of ram is installed in either machine i experience full stability (weeks uptime) with no kernel panics.

 

When 4gb ram is installed. It is recognised properly by BIOS, WinXP, and mac os X.

In OSX, i load up ram and as soon as it hits 3.3-3.4 gb usage it kernel panics. Sometimes it will work however and will stay up for days.However, it will kernel panic when restarted/shutdown and be unstable again.

 

If i remove a pair of ram, its fully stable again.

 

I've tried many kernels

3 of the latest from #1049

the sse3 only and universal from #kernel

netkas kernel.

No kernel change makes it work properly.

I have not tried it under 10.4.8 yet.

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BJMoose
BJMoose
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After testing on some really low level stuff just to get my feet wet in OSX86, the first serious Hackintosh system I built was with the DQ6 mb. It performed well under Windows and I thought it was pretty stable under OSX until I began putting it through its paces. Had the same situation as you with the ram. I originally had 2GB and all was well. When ram prices dropped, I picked up a couple more GB and began to have some minor instability problems. Did all the memtest checks on the ram and didn't show any problems. Even swapped PSUs, since a failing PSU can also trigger instability problems at high useage. Tried replacing the 4 1gb sticks with 2 2gb sticks. Had the same problem. After much trial and error and research, I found no solution. So I pulled the motherboard, bought a Bad Axe 2 mb and all has been perfect since.

 

I'm going to build another Windows system using the DQ6 since I have the ram and an extra ATI video card. But apparantly, my rev. of the DQ6 (can't remember which one it is at the moment) doesn't like >2gb ram under OSX86.

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nargot
nargot
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thats sort of a PITA that the gigabyte boards are not taking 4gb ram in OSX. Apart from that i have no issues with either the DS3 (apart from the two ICH8 sata ports that wont work) or DQ6 mobo.

 

If i don't hear any good news from anyone, i might have to reside in the fact that i can't go past higher than 3 gb on my system.

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  • 2 months later...
meisterk
meisterk
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Can someone please confirm that 10.4.10 fixes this? I'm going to build a quad core rig using a Gigabyte P35-DS3R mobo w/ 4gigs of RAM, i'll be damned if I get some random kernel panic during night renders... ^_^

 

 

Edited for grammar

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ddrdark
ddrdark
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Can someone please confirm that 10.4.10 fixes this? I'm going to build a quad core rig using a Gigabyte P35-DS3R mobo w/ 4gigs of RAM, i'll be damned if I have some random kernel panic during night renders... ^_^

Edited for grammar

Yeah!! I'm interested too, coz I want to put 4gb in my p35-ds4. 2x1gb working great and fully stable ^_^

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nargot
nargot
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i'm still stress testing for kernel panics

 

i've had one so far in the last 2 days. No kernel panics with 2 or 3 gb ram. I'll let you know if i get another one or not.

 

Update:

had another kernel panic minutes ago. So the system is not stable with 4gb ram, but can access it unlike previous kernels.

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meisterk
meisterk
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i'm still stress testing for kernel panics

 

i've had one so far in the last 2 days. No kernel panics with 2 or 3 gb ram. I'll let you know if i get another one or not.

 

Update:

had another kernel panic minutes ago. So the system is not stable with 4gb ram, but can access it unlike previous kernels.

 

Hmm that's too bad ;)

 

is that something semthex/netkas/some kernel devs are working on? is this a known issue?

 

On the 10.4.9 kernel is see only 3.2gb of RAM whereas on the 10.4.10 the full 4gb are listed. On XP, system properties gives me 3.5gb.

 

edited 4/9/07

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nargot
nargot
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Hmm that's too bad :)

 

is that something semthex/netkas/some kernel devs are working on? is this a known issue?

 

On the 10.4.9 kernel is see only 3.2gb of RAM whereas on the 10.4.10 the full 4gb are listed. On XP, system properties gives me 3.5gb.

 

edited 4/9/07

 

 

AFAIK its an issue on gigabyte boards. There are lots of people using 4gb ram on intel/asus boards i dunno about stress tested though. I'll test 4gb ram on a G33M and P35 board later this week.

 

in summary for those reading

On 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 kernels osX can see all 4gb ram on both my boards.

10.4.9 crashes as soon as it hits 3.4 gb usage.

10.4.10 can use all the ram but kernel panics eventually.

10.4.8-10.4.10 - 3gb ram is fully stable with no kernel panics.

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meisterk
meisterk
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AFAIK its an issue on gigabyte boards. There are lots of people using 4gb ram on intel/asus boards i dunno about stress tested though. I'll test 4gb ram on a G33M and P35 board later this week.

 

in summary for those reading

On 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 kernels osX can see all 4gb ram on both my boards.

10.4.9 crashes as soon as it hits 3.4 gb usage.

10.4.10 can use all the ram but kernel panics eventually.

10.4.8-10.4.10 - 3gb ram is fully stable with no kernel panics.

 

Maybe someone with ASUS/INTEL boards and 4 gigs of ram can tell us about stability? IMO that's not an issue with Gigabyte boards, you seem to have a 965P based board whereas I got a P35 one, so this must be about 32 bit kernel limitation... maybe apple's implementation of PAE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension) is buggy...

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Azurael
Azurael
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Crikey... You have a rev 1.0 DQ6 in your main rig and a rev 3.3 DS3 in your second rig too. We even nearly have the same CPUs (my main is an E6320, rather than an E6300... Just had to have my 4MB L2!) but I also have an E4300 in my second rig.

 

My DS3 doesn't like the RAM I've got in it at all. It only works in slots 2+4, not slots 1+3, 1+2 or 2+3(odd, with those last two, since you'd think single channel would put less strain on the memory controller!) Either stick individually works fine in any slot and other RAM is fine as normal, so I think they can be picky. Maybe OS X is just stressing it out more than other OSes for some reason. Can you run through MemTest86+ multiple times with the 4GB installed? It's annoying because I was planning to buy another GeIL 2GB kit to stick in my main rig, but if 4GB is going to be an issue, I'll give it a miss (though I don't use OS X on this rig anyway, so if it genuinely is just OS X acting up, it's not an issue. Trouble is, I don't believe it can be...)

 

I certainly wouldn't want to "downgrade" to a 975X-based board from P965/P35, I like my overclock ;)

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ddrdark
ddrdark
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Maybe it's a problem with the 965 chipset, not with gigabyte motherboards. Let's see if someone with a p35 chipset have this problems! ;)

 

both machines are loaded with the latest bios in my setup

can run 3gb ram stable (2 x 1gb, 2 x 512 mb or 3 x 1 gb) on either machine

4gb ram will kernel panic

 

4gb ram is stable in XP

 

HAve u tried the new kernel (8.10.3)???

 

thanks!

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wanamino
wanamino
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ok...other idea..maybe is a problem with the PAE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension), i know that in xp, if u want to use , u want to turn it on, but at last on my system, PAE is activated by default....what about disabling it? (i don't know how to do that, only sugesting :D )

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meisterk
meisterk
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Edited for clarity / syntax

 

Okay... I've got a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R which is basically a DS4 minus the heatpipes and 2nd PCI Express slot... I tried 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 kernels, both kernel panic after a while if total memory usage (Resident + Active + Inactive) gets to 4Gb (swapping)

 

Unlike nargot the panic occurs sooner than 12-24h period. AFAIK it's related to video memory being mapped incorrectly, as it seems to crash as soon as a window gets moved / resized.

 

I haven't heard of the 8.10.3 kernel, has someone more info about this? #kernel channel at irc.osx86.hu seems dead, no one ever answers.

 

I'm using 8.10.1 kernel that came with the second Koolkal update.

 

That's quite a shame since i put up this rig for massive 3D renderings that use lots of RAM :(

 

Maybe someone can give us the means to contact Netkas/Mifki whoever and tell them about this issue with 965/P35 boards

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