Can you mix RAM together?

[Cloaked_Thunder]

I have 2 sticks of 256 mb pc3200 Low latency corsair RAM and i just bought 1 stick of 512mb pc3200pro corsair. My pc only supports 2 slots of pc3200. Im gonna order the other stick of 512 mb im a few weeks for a 1 gb total but what i was wondering was if i could use 1 stick of 512 and 1 stick of 256 for a temoprary time until i get my other stick in. Will this work? What if the 256 is registered(buffered??) ram and the 512 is unbuffered, will they work?

[OneManArmy]

you can mix ram all day long, BUT it has to be the same as in buffered or unbuffered.

[_-Gunslinger-_]

And they wont dual channel either.

[Cloaked_Thunder]

I know my new 512 stick is unbuffered, but how can i tell if my old ones are? Prolly a stupid question but oh well


dual channel? ermm whats that. I R noober at times.

[_-Gunslinger-_]

My suggestion just try it. If you computer doesnt boot then remove the 256 mb stick and play on. Dual Channel is an advanced feature that makes it so that you have a channel assigned to each Ram stick (only in pairs however). It makes it so that you can communicate to the RAM twice as fast. I think it only exists on 865 chipsets (or Knockoffs of equivilant callibur) and up but I may be wrong.

[TheRagingGerbil]

Mix it up, you can even mix RAM with different speeds, just remember, the entire block will only perform as fast as the slowest piece.

[Rbstr]

you all a basicaly right, your ram is not going to be buffered unless you have a server machine or an AMD64, You can put whatever speed memory with a different speed but it wil go the slower speed and have Stability issues (same with latency). It wil not go dual channel unless you have two of the same size(sometime you can with this one but rarely)/latency/speed stick in a 875/865 p4 or a new NF2 Athoalon mobo (but dual isn't myuch of an issue here becsuase the chip hase bad memory bandwidth)

[NoSurrender]

the ram will run as fast as the slowest stick of ram you own. Registered is for servers so unless you bought super expensive server memory then you have non registered. also registered is slower.

[JonnyK]

to use dual channel does the motherboard have to have support specialy for it, like i've seen different versions of my mobo that have like, 1 ram slot separate from the other two, and the two are for dual channel. because i got 3 slots and 1 512 stick of pc3200. so, next time i upgraded my ram (not for a long time) i'ma get 2 gig of dual channel (1 gig per stick) but will that work if my motherboard doesn't say it specificaly supports dual channel?

[NoSurrender]

no

[Biohazzard56]

I gave my friend 512MB of PC2100, he originally had 1 256 stick of PC2400, but he has 4 ram slots could he put in the PC2400 and still in theory have 756 2 PC2100 and 1 PC2400 Ram?

[Rbstr]

no the memory bus has to work at the same speed on all the sticks that just the way it is.

Yes the mother baord has to suport dual channel, or rather the chipset does. all of the NF2 mobos (and most others) do, all of the 865's except one version of it does, the 875 has an enhanced version that lowers the latency when in dual channel (the 865's do to but its disabled) and the VIA and SiS has p4 chipsets that do dual channel