Posted: 7/28/2010 4:19:40 PM EDT
| If I have 2 gigs of RAM(four half sticks), can I replace one or two of them with a full gig stick(s) or should you not mix and match different types of RAM? |
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Check you MB specs to see how much it can handle. Also you can mix memory as long as it is the same type and speed. If not you may have issues or your MB might not recognize it. Your MB may also down grade one of the chips to match the other lower speed. It is always best to install the same type and speed. Depending on the memory you can mix 1gb and 2gb without any issues....BUT REMEMBER TO CHECK YOUR MB SPECS FIRST |
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as long as your mo-bo and O/S will support 4gigs doesn tmatter if they are diffrent brands as long as they all have the same bus speed. use this website to check your mo-bo. there is a littl eapp on the page that automatically detecs your system andtells you what you can use. www.memorystock.com |
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Quoted:
First I should ask, where is my hangup with this PC? AMD Athlon 64 Processor 4000+ 2.41 GHz, 2.00 GB of RAM Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX edit: Thanks for the link. For games? the video card is outdated, too little ram and you didn't post your hard drive specs. |
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If you're still using WinXP you will be fine on 3GB. And if your O/S is 32bit, you'll only have access to about 3.2GB if you install 4GB anyway. You need a 64bit O/S to take full advantage of greater than 3GB of ram(your video card/other hardware counts in the 4GB O/S limit).
That looks like a s939 system, which means the CPU's(yes, the CPU was the issue here) used in them have limitations on the amount and speed of the ram installed. If you use all 4 slots and the ram is double sided for example, the speed will be decreased from the default DDR400 down to DDR333. The later s939 chips(Venice/San Diego core and later) partially addressed this limitation by allowing 4 slots to be filled if they are single sided, and large 1GB modules are usually not. Therefore 3GB of DDR400 is better than 3.2(4GB-O/S limitation) of DDR333. So, go with 3GB if you have 32bit or waste over 700MB's of the 4th stick. The combo I used was 2x1024 + 2x512. Because the two 512 sticks were single sided, occupying all 4 slots allows full speed. I should have made that more clear in the above paragraph. The limitation is if all 4 slots have double sided ram. . . . If this is a gaming system, then everything is outdated. Quads are becoming very useful in games lately while the brand new Hex cores are mostly useless over a quad(for gaming). Most modern games today benefit greatly from dual cores, which means a single core is totally outdated. Assuming you don't have a giant monitor and use a relatively low resolution(below 1680x1050 wide, or below 1600x1200 square), you can get super cheap dual core systems with a decently priced $150-300 video card and game quite nicely. Some of the dual core AMD's can be unlocked to quads too. Your current system is good for games dating through about 2006. |