Mixed Ram

[Nix]

My brother bought his PC over for me to put in a DVD burner.

Before doing anything I hooked it up to see the current config and the PSU blew- crap.

When I opened the tower it was very dusty, especially the PSU.

Anyway in the interim his machine only has one stick of PC2100 DDR256 256MB ram.

I have a spare stick of PC3200 DDR400 256MB ram.

I know that if I put in the DDR400 stick it will only run at DDR256, is it worth it for the boost in system memory or should I swap out the ddr256 for the ddr400 and thus still only have 256Mb ram but faster.

[liam858]

I'd go with choice A, quantity over speed, what OS is he running?


Liam

[Nix]

WinMe and Win2000 dual boot although he has never really used the Win2000 side until last week when he bought his wife an Ipod Nano and Itunes told him he needed to install on either WinXP or Win2000.

[prouton]

I don't understand why you would swap out one stick of 256MB for another 256MB that won't run any faster? Or was that a typo?

Not to be a wet blanket, but there's the possibility that your question is academic in that the DDR400 memory may not work in the older motherboard.

[Nix]

Sorry my post was not clear and succinct (sic).

There is currently a stick of DDR256 256Mb in there.

If stick the DDR400 in as well, it will only run as fast as the other stick so will run at 256mhz.

The combined total memory would be 512Mb though.

If I pull out the DDR256 and put in the DDR400, the machine will still have 256Mb ram but the memory will will run at 400Mhz so the memory woul dbe just over 50% faster.

I think I'll agree with liam858 that 512Mb @ 256 is better than 256Mb @ 400

[prouton]

Putting just the DDR400 stick in the computer does not necessarily mean that the memory access will run at 400MHz. Memory only runs as fast as the front-side bus is set to run at. If it currently runs at 266MHz, it's unlikely that it can be set to 400MHz as that would require both a motherboard chipset that runs that fast and a processor that supports that bus speed (front-side bus speed is typically related to the processor clocking speed).

[Nix]

Good point - didn't think of that, maybe I'll I just stick it in and let it all run at 256 and gain the benefit of another 256Mb ram.