Uneven pairs of DDR2

[novicetechie]

So after hours of trying to figure out why my motherboard only displayed 3.072 gbs of ram, I tested each stick.

Turns out even though I purchased a 4gb kit from OCZ, the first stick they gave me was actually 1gb instead of 2, even though both of the stickers on the sticks said 2..

I had been on windows xp pro for the past year and so I thought the 3 gb of ram was normal (memory limitation), but now that I'm on 7(x64), I just noticed the issue.

My question. THe sticks are DDR2, so they should haev been in matching pairs. Its been more than a year and I haven't had any issues.

Is it okay that they've been running as mismatched pairs?

I ran memtest for about 7 hours and no errors came up, but I'm wondering if its okay to keep using these uneven pairs until I can get a true 4gb set?

 

[chefboyeb]

Yeah, you can until you get a stick that match... good luck...

 

[erick81]

I am running two 2gb sticks with two 1gb sticks of ddr2 1066. It should be fine as long as there the same speed.

 

[atmos929]

The only possible issue would be the frequency and latencies. if they are different, you might want to set the frequency to the slowest stick; The same goes for latencies, manually set them to the bigger values in your Bios.

On a side comment, I don't usually trust "auto" configuration of speeds by the Bios, I used to have 4 sticks of 1 GB each with different latencies (something like 4-5-4-14 and 5-5-5-15 or something) and my Bios had them auto-set to 5-5-5-30... had to manually set them to 5-5-5-15 and worked percect.

 

[atmos929]

also, if one of the pairs does not match in size, you won't get them to work on dual channel, making them a little slower.

 

[abdussamad]

Most likely some of your memory is taken up by the integrated graphics chip on your motherboard.

 

[novicetechie]

I double checked on each stick's specifications. Even though both sticks are suppose to be 2gb (part of a 4gb kit), 1 of them is only 1gb. From what I remember in memtest, they both have the same cas latency and voltage requirements.



I wanted to ask an additional question.

Has anyone ever heard of a ram stick being defective or malfunctioning, that it would only report half of its capacity?

I ask because I'm worried that maybe the 2gb stick reporting in as 1gb is actually defective & might harm my motherboard or its components. (Though I think its worth mentioning that I've been using this ram for almost 1.5 years and it hasn't caused any issues in data corruption and none of the components on my motherboard seem to be malfunctioning).

But I ran memtest for hours upon end on it, and it didn't report a single error. I also have never heard my motherboard make any BIOS codes or seen it report any errors in regards to my ram.

With all this in mind, would you say my 2gb stick is defective OR has it just been mislabeled by OCZ?

Also with that in mind, is it okay to just keep using both sticks until OCZ can send me the replacement sticks?