Adding 8GB to Asus U43F makes things slow

My cousin has an Asus U43F Bamboo notebook thingy and I just bought her 2x4GB memory to replace the 2x2GB after she complained about it being slow and not enough RAM. After installing it, the computer became really slow, with 2-3 minute boot times and slow to install and open programs. We removed one stick and voila it was fast again with only 1x4GB. The slot it was using didn't matter. Curious, we removed the new memory and compared used the old memory again, comparing 1 stick versus 2 together. 1 stick was far faster while 2 sticks were sluggish. I'm not sure why this would happen. The laptop originally came with two sticks installed to begin with.

I'm just troubleshooting over the phone so can't really comment on what options are available in the BIOS. It might have to do with dual channel memory being screwy, or maybe the use of system memory for graphics, just to throw some ideas around. There are two BIOSes available on Asus' site. One is the first release, and the other has a cryptic "Support smbus port 80 DRAM debug card". I dunno what that is.

I'm seeing various notebooks on the internet with the same 2x4GB slowdown problem but no real fixes yet.


Edit: I will try to flash the BIOS to see if it fixes anything. Current version is 213 and latest is 216. Should I use winflash or use the "start easy flash" thing in the BIOS menu?

 

Hi,

Try to look at the system bus and compair when you have 1 stick then 2 stick. Perhaps for reason we will discover soon, when you have the 2 sticks it's running at much lower frequency (RAM) and the system bus

 

I think most people advise using EZ Flash, but either one should accomplish the update.