RAM Questions...

[Razer]

S! Ya'll....

I'm in the middle of a yearly upgrade of my beast, and have couple of simple, if stupid, questions regarding RAM....

My current setup is based on a Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 motherboard, equipped, at the moment, with 2x 512mb DDRII 667 ram (I believe its the 5-5-5-15 type)...

Now my question is this; to upgrade the RAM, what should I do...?

Its difficult to find the same type of RAM, being 5-5-5-15 (or what ever it is) and its seemingly cheaper (almost) to simply buy 1gb sticks...

Do I buy two 1gb sticks, and run 3gb of RAM? Would this work? Does it even need to be 667?

And on that note; how about mearly buying a 1gb stick, and running that with the 512's (like above)...?

Obviously I'm not too concerned about running it 'dual-channel' or anything, mearly wanting to know what I can do to increase my RAM count....

[Roy]

Check your motherboard manual to see if there are any limitations with different RAM size and speed sticks, although generally if you add a stick that's faster (DDR2-800 for example) it'll work at a slower speed to match your current ram sticks. The only problem I can think of is the motherboard requiring paired ram sticks (this will also be noted in the manual if it's required), ie 2x512mb DDR2 + 2x 1gbDDR2, other than that it should work just fine.

[dflion]

Hi Razor,
My advise is to buy the 1MB sticks of RAM -if your Gigabyte board takes 3Mb - get three MB's of RAM. The reason for doing this is that quite a few of Oleg's maps require intensive random access memory to function smoothly - the more RAM you have the better your mission's run in IL2.
When BOB is released, you will need plenty of RAM to run the game effectively, so the extra investment won't be wasted.
DFLion

[Razer]

cheers guys.

the Mobo can handle upto 16gb apparently (according to the manual) - having an OS that takes advantage of that is another story....

It doesn't say anything regarding mixing different RAM (for example 2x 512mb + 2x 1gb) though.... but as you say, this should be ok?

[Roy]

Originally Posted by Razer

cheers guys.

the Mobo can handle upto 16gb apparently (according to the manual) - having an OS that takes advantage of that is another story....

It doesn't say anything regarding mixing different RAM (for example 2x 512mb + 2x 1gb) though.... but as you say, this should be ok?

yep yep

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Remember, don't mix ram of different speed and timings, this can cause trouble and all sticks will function at the level of the slowest one. It's best with ram as cheap as it is just to buy a 2g kit of 2 1gig sticks of fast DRR2 800.

[K_Freddie]

Originally Posted by Razer

S! Ya'll....
Its difficult to find the same type of RAM, being 5-5-5-15 (or what ever it is)

This little number sequence is probably the number of 'clock cycles' for each phase of accesssing ram. Essentially the lower the numbers the faster the ram.
That '15' at the end is a bit worrying - It's the ram recovery time.


Forgot to add: some bios's allow you to play with these timing parameters... But you have to know what you're doing of course.
The worst you can do is crash the system at startup, so you can reset and change these parameters until it works.

[WhiteSnake]

If you got a Windows XP or Vista 32bit version than i advice you to use 2x 1024mb DDR2-800 in Dual Channel, the closer they are matched, the better so best would be to buy a set.
2Gb Dual Channel gives you much more performance than 3Gb Single Channel.
You enable dual channel by sticking the ram modules in slot 1 & 3 or 2 & 4.

If you got a Windows XP Media Center Editionb 2005 32bit (4Gb max), XP 64bit or Vista 64bit you can stick 4x 1024mb DDR2-800 in your Mobo, than 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 will go into Dual Channel mode.

There are also 2Gb DDR2-800 modules that are not to expensive, so for a 64bit OS you could stick 4x 2048 in your Mobo.

Paired modules in Dual Channel are faster than double the amount in Single Channel.

[bomath]

Originally Posted by WhiteSnake

[...]
Paired modules in Dual Channel are faster than double the amount in Single Channel.

That's a gross exageration. The theoretical benchmarks show at most 40% improvement (or even less for Core2Duo, because of its higly effective cache). What's really relevant is that (with a top-end machine!) you'd see at most 5-10% improvement in Sturmovik FPS coming from dual-channel; to believe it, just try your memory sticks on non-channel paired slots (like 1&2, if you use 1&3 for dual-channel).
Anything under 2GB is sub-par, and 4GB RAM is becoming the de-facto standard for gaming rigs. If only Vista-x64 SP1 would behave more nicely...

[Razer]

Thanks for the responses... but I'm still confused...

Well I've managed to find ram sticks the same speed as my current 512mb sticks, and I'd like to know:

Can I run these two 512mb sticks, as well as, the two 1gb sticks as well, bringing the total to 3gb total...?

The speed of the sticks are all the same, but is just different sizes... that wont be a problem?