Is it ok to have 2g 800mhz and 1g 667mhz on same pc?

[devilite]

ok so look, i bought a new pc, it has 1 stick of ram (2g 800mhz DDRII), and i got another free slot.
so i was wondering if it is ok to take 1 stick of ram from my old pc (1g 667mhz DDRII) and put them together,
so ill have 2g 800mhz and 1g 667mhz on the same pc.
is that possible?
and will my pc work better with 2g 800mhz and 1g 667mhz
rather then only 2g 800mhz?

thx

 

[Lutfij]

well the ram with the lowest timings will be the dominant module that your mobo recognizes...in essence your modules will BOTH run at 667MHz so your not doing a benifit to your rig only getting it to ruin slower as the mobo has to address the handicap in speeds.

Leave the 667 Ram alone and I'd suggest getting a new pair of rams if your looking for an upgrade path. Getting another 2GB stick with dif s/n and batch make will give your rig stutters even though they may be of same manufacturer/latencies/frequency or capacity.

 

[Pilk]

Lut is correct the MB will clock down to the lower freqeuncy. Rather get another dimm of the higher freqeuncy therefore you will not have a bottleneck when it comes to the freqeuncies on your ram.

 

[devilite]

so ur saying that its better to leave it at only 2g 800mhz, rather then adding the 1g 667mhz?
but 3g ram is better then 2g ram...

 

[will14]

If you're consistently using more than 2g of ram then the use of ram instead of disk cache will still make it speed up.

However if you're using only 1 gig of ram most of the time it will be slower as you're ram is going slower and having more won't necessarily get it through the pipe faster.

It's like a highway, if you have one car but two lanes changing the speed limit to 66 from 80 and adding another lane slows you down. If there are 3 cars or heavy traffic it'll speed up the commute but otherwise you're getting there slower.

Chances are you won't notice a slowdown and it'll still increase your performance but another stick of 800mhz would speed up/add capability without any drawbacks.

I didn't want to go into a full run down of how ram worked but hopefully this helps explain it.

 

[Lutfij]

Google *RAM timmings* and you'll see what i mean. If you did a lil digging then you'd learn about CAS timings and latencies...its not just the size of a car its whats under the hood that counts just how japanesse tuners are able to outrun ferraries even though the tuners look like hotwheels cars

so, if your looking at an upgrade instead of just patching your rig with whats lying around...get a dual channel kit and sell the existing 2GB 800MHz stick. You can do the same for the 1GB 667MHz stick.

reason why i'm suggesting buying dual channel kits is cos they are sorted according to batch numbers during the manufacturing process. So a pair of rams that come as a KIT are like a pair of ears...you wouldn't want to have a black and a white ear on one head...or would you ?

 

[rahamk]

Im sorry i have a question as well,

reason why i'm suggesting buying dual channel kits is cos they are sorted according to batch numbers during the manufacturing process. So a pair of rams that come as a KIT are like a pair of ears...you wouldn't want to have a black and a white ear on one head...or would you ?

So if i bought 4gb of ram in july, and then i bought another 4gb of the exact same capactiy, brand, timing etc... they wouldnt work together properly? is that what your saying?

 

[Lutfij]

^ i'd suggest you start a thread of your won instead of hijacking one.

To answer your question : yes they'd stutter - look around the forums and you'll see most(not all) of the problems are related to buying 2/4 ram sets on 2 separate dates.