Rummy Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 (edited) I know rather little about RAM, and a bit of googling seemed to give me various different answers that I'm not sure what's true or not! So I came to the place I love and trust the most, you guys! When it comes to dual channel RAM, whats the worst things that can happen from having mixed RAM? Different brands, different sizes, different speeds etc? Will there always be a noticable effect? EDIT: Does the kind of RAM affect the mixings? Cos I'm talking about DDR2 SO DIMM here, for a laptop, which I gather is 200pin. All of which means nothing to me except making sure it fits. Edited May 28, 2009 by Rummy
Sanchez Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 It's not recommended at all. The sticks will all run at the lowest speeds, there could be some instability and some outright incompatabilities. If you want to put more RAM into your laptop you will need to get 200 pin SO DIMM.
Rummy Posted May 28, 2009 Author Posted May 28, 2009 What about mixing different sizes? Like a 1GB and 2GB? I heard that that was ok and wouldn't cause any problems really. I'm looking to find out what's the worst that could happen, and what's the least worst?
Nolan Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 Different sizes are fine. Anytime you see a laptop advertised with 3GB of RAM they have a 1GB and a 2GB. Sometimes, but it's rarer, They'll do 512 512 and two 1GB sticks if there are 4 slots.
Rummy Posted May 28, 2009 Author Posted May 28, 2009 Ok thanks guys. Basically the reason I asked was cos when I bought my laptop around this time 2007 from ebuyer, they advertised an offer for Kingston 1GB ValueRAM when bought with, and the laptop already had one gig of RAM inside it, so I thought I'd get it and upgrade to two. Only I didn't realise that the 1gig inside was made up of 2x512MB modules, but I'd been told it would be fine to mix the sizes anyway. I've forever hated my laptop, often hanging which I blamed on Vista being rather process heavy, but today I opened it up to check what RAM I had, thinking I might get some more RAM and hope it solves the problems, and then I wrote down the model numbers of the RAMs and googled them, and I think I found out that the 1gig ValueRAM I bought runs at 533MHz whereas the original 512MB RAM in the laptop seems to be 667MHz according to tinternets, and I'm thinking it's a possibility this may be an explanation to all my problems. I've found some matching Kingston ValueRAM, and I'm gonna get a 2GB stick to mix with the 1GB stick, this'll all be fine, right? The model number of the RAMs are exactly the same except with 1G/2G at the end.
Nolan Posted May 28, 2009 Posted May 28, 2009 Yup, that all sounds fine. Vista is much nicer too when you have more than 1GB, I've had my 2GB stick fail on me before,and boy does everything slow down.
Rummy Posted May 30, 2009 Author Posted May 30, 2009 Right well I've ordered, cost like £19 with postage so when it arrives I'll stick it in in place of the 512 and hope things start to run nicer! Thanks for all the help!
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