I'm getting a continuous beep when booting up PC

[Lykkwid]

Specs
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Memory: Geil DDR2 PC-6400 2 x 1GB
Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme
GPU: nVdia Gefore 8800GTS

Hi! When I turned on my PC earlier today, it would give one continuous long beep and nothing showed up on the monitor. I tried a different graphics card first, but that did not help. Next, I decided to take out one slot of RAM and it booted up fine.

So, to illustrate what is going on, I have four RAM slots, and the continous beep occurrs with this configuration:

DIMM_A1 = blank
DIMM_A2 = 1 GB GEIL
DIMM_B1 = blank
DIMM_B2 = 1 GB GEIL

After a bit of testing, it appears having even a single piece RAM in DIMM_A1 or DIMM_A2 (regardless of whether any RAM is in B1 or B2) will result in the continuous beeping noise and no bootup of PC.

Therefore, my current configuration, which results in a successful boot up, is as follows:

DIMM_A1 = blank
DIMM_A2 = blank
DIMM_B1 = 1 GB GEIL
DIMM_B2 = 1 GB GEIL

So, I have two questions

1) My conclusion, and I could be wrong, is that A1 and A2 are faulty but is there anything I can attempt to do to fix this issue without replacing my motherboard?

2) I intended to use this PC for gaming. Does having a 1 GB piece of RAM in DIMM_B1 and DIMM_B2 mean it is no longer running at DDR2? If this is true, what are the detrimental effects to the overall performance of my PC?

Sorry if this is long winded, but I tried to be as detailed as possible. Thanks for any help.

[Nagoshi]

What is the color pattern of the RAM sticks?

Put the sticks on the same colors. IF you ahve black/black/red/red (pure example) put them in both black colors or red colors. They have to be in the same color slots to work in dual channel.

If you can'T do it, it just will run at single channel instead of dual channel. It will still run at the speed you make it run to Just in single channel so you'll lose a bit of memory performance there.

[Lykkwid]

Hi, thanks for the reply. Basically, this is what my current setup looks like:

DIMM_A1 = blank
DIMM_A2 = blank
DIMM_B1 = 1 GB GEIL
DIMM_B2 = 1 GB GEIL

Unfortunately, A1 and A2 refuse to work for some reason, so I'm pretty sure it is not running at dual channel if what you said is correct.

Do you know how much of a performance decrease will result in running it in single channel? I'm considering buying a new motherboard but money is tight, and if there is not much of a performance decrease then I might just use the machine the way it is, for the time being.

Unfortunately, I can't accurately benchmark it against a game since I have no idea what the performance was like before the DIMM_A1 and DIMM_A2 broke down...