Adding memory

Hi Folks,

I have 1536MB RAM installed (board is Gigabyte GA-945GMF-S2) using 512MB chips, 2 x PC2-6400 plus 1 x PC2-4300 (according to CPU-Z). As far as I can understand, the PC2-4300 is slower then the other two, only I don't know how much this effects performeces. I plan to upgrade to 2GB and my question is: Should I take out the slow memory and buy two faster sticks, or can I just buy another stick (whatever bandwidth) and drop it in?

TIA

 

it depends what you do with your computer. Gaming = lower CAS latencies and faster RAM clock speeds. Basic use, you are unlikely to notice any performance gain from doing so.

 

Hi rimmer,

Thank you for your answer.

This is a gaming machine, so I'll probably want faster memory. According to Gigabyte (GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview - GA-945GMF-S2 (rev. 1.0)) the board supports 667MHz memory. Isn't this speed LOWER then the capabilities of the PC2-6400 chips I have now?

(Sorry about my newbee questions, all this hardware stuff is still a big mistery for me)

TIA

 

You need to know the max size memory you can go first, then use all the same brand and size..It also depends on how many slots you have...Mismatching
memory is never a good Idea...

 

Hi Ghostman,

This board supports up to 4GB. I don't want to go all the way right now, but I need 2GB ASAP. What I would like to know is which memory sticks to buy for highest performences at the lowest price.

TIA

 

There are allot of different Brands that are good, I like to use Kingston myself.
But to each is own..

 

I don't care so much for the brand, it's the speed and size that matter.

 

Upgrade to 2gb by this your performance will increase

 

I thought you wanted a good brand, By mismatching memory you will never get a true reading. also is the same for using garbage brands..

 

I'll go for any brand in the board manufacturer compatibility list, but I'm still not sure what is the optimal memory speed in my case.

 

Hi,

You would want to buy PC2-5300 ram according to the sticky in this forum :


5.3GB/s=PC2-5300=DDR2-667 (may also show up as PC2-5400)

I believe if you have RAM rated for different speeds, all of your RAM (if they are capable) are going to run at the slower speed so you really want to buy all of the same stuff.

 

Thank You Wildcard,

One more question: Is it possible/recommended to mix different size sticks? Suppose I want to upgrade to 3GB, can I use 2 x 512MB plus 2 x 1024MB?

TIA

 

Hi,

Yes, you should be able to mix the sizes. Right now I am using 2 1GB sticks and 2 512MB sticks in my computer. The only downside is using different sizes will not allow you to run them in dual channel mode, which is supposed to give the RAM extra performance - i think I read about 10% increase... but having 2 GB of RAM in dual channel is not as good as having 3GB not in dual channel mode, at least not in my opinion