DDR2 667MHz running at 533 MHz. Help?

[JacobeeGames]

A little while ago one of my friends wanted to start a local Minecraft server for us and a few friends to play from home, I ended up using an older Dell Dimension machine I had lying around to run it on. The tower was upgraded, most notable being the CPU, GPU, and memory departments. Dell had upgraded the CPU from a Pentium 4 to a Pentium D 945 3.4 GHz dual core before I got it form the original owner, I added an AMD Radeon HD 5450 just for some better graphical output and because why not, I also went from the dual channel 2gb's of DDR2 800 to 2 dual channel kits of DDR2 667MHz (2gb kits each a total of 4gb's). I even threw in a hard drive I had lying around to upgrade the old 80gb drive inside.

 

Now to the problem, which should be obvious, the memory in task manager is showing DDR 533MHz instead of DDR2 667, even though both kits are rated at 667 (one from Kingston and the other from Hynix) even in BIOS it recognizes all 4 sticks of DDR2 memory running in "dual interleaved" memory channel mode, but again only at 533 MHz. At first I thought it was just a CPU FSB speed limitation but the 945 has a FSB of 800 MHz. Anyone think I should try a BIOS update considering I get a CPU incompatible error on startup? Maybe it's the older BIOS that is slowing the ram to the FSB of an older or previously installed CPU?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Yeah, upgrade that BIOS.

 

I also wouldn't use something like that for a Minecraft server, especially not with just 4GB of memory, that's the bare minimum. Usually the minimum people will recommend for a Minecraft server is 8GB.

[JacobeeGames]

@Crunchy Dragon Yeah, I knew there would be a memory limitation for the system, but I have even gotten away with 2gb's on a slightly modded server with 2 people. It's pushing it but we're going to have to deal with it since I can't find some higher capacity dimm's of DDR2 for the money I'd be willing to spend on it, I need a new motherboard for my current system so I can't spend too much on memory for a system I don't use much.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, I'll do my best to try and update the BIOS on this system and see if that fixes it, I have a feeling it will.

[JacobeeGames]

50 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Yeah, upgrade that BIOS.

 

I also wouldn't use something like that for a Minecraft server, especially not with just 4GB of memory, that's the bare minimum. Usually the minimum people will recommend for a Minecraft server is 8GB.

I found the newest BIOS on Dell's website for the Dell Dimension E510 and while trying to install it I keep getting an error stating "Windows Configuration Error. An error was encountered trying to configure Windows to allow flashing, please reboot and try again. If this error re-occurs, please contact technical support" The Dell forums weren't very helpful to me nothing I tried worked, I tried a reboot like the error stated, ran as administrator, nothing worked. I'm fairly "techy" I'd be willing to go to some great lengths to get this working if I had some guidance.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, JacobeeGames said:

I found the newest BIOS on Dell's website for the Dell Dimension E510 and while trying to install it I keep getting an error stating "Windows Configuration Error. An error was encountered trying to configure Windows to allow flashing, please reboot and try again. If this error re-occurs, please contact technical support" The Dell forums weren't very helpful to me nothing I tried worked, I tried a reboot like the error stated, ran as administrator, nothing worked. I'm fairly "techy" I'd be willing to go to some great lengths to get this working if I had some guidance.

Can you not flash it from the BIOS directly? I've never had to flash a BIOS from within Windows, as it's usually not recommended(and is more dangerous).

[JacobeeGames]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Can you not flash it from the BIOS directly? I've never had to flash a BIOS from within Windows, as it's usually not recommended(and is more dangerous).

As far as I can see there is no way to flash the BIOS from inside the BIOS, usually that is the route I would go as well but this is a Dell after all, they aren't the most friendly to people working on them.