Memory question?

Question

My motherboard has 3 slots for memory. Board takes DDR400. Acceptable memory is PC3200, PC2700 or PC2100.

I just pulled the memory and it turns out I have two PC3200 chips and 1 PC2700 chip.... does the PC2700 slow the system down or have any other adverse effect?

Ok.... was afraid of that.... is that a huge difference? The 3 chips are all 512mb chips, do you think I am better off pulling the PC2700 chip and going with 1 gig at 400MHz or keeping it as is 1.5gig running at 333MHz?

Answer 1

Your memory bus Will only run at the speed of the slowest memory installed. Does your mobo support dual channel? If so just install the two ddr 400 sticks and it will be faster.

And you will take a small performance hit not much with the 333 mhz stick installed..

Answer 2

How fast is the fastest disk channel? Most computers are so much faster than the disks attached to them that your PC will drag along waiting for the disk a lot anyway. And, unless you are doing such serious gaming as to push your CPU chip anyway, you are unlikely to push that memory hard enough to make a BIG difference.

Based on swapping and paging considerations, you would do better to have more memory (even if slower) and reduce the amount of page/swap functions you need to perform. More memory = less paging and swapping. Both of those are disk-dependent, so reducing those factors is crucial anyway.

When your computer is in "wait mode" - i.e. waiting for you to do something, that memory speed will not matter at all. When you hit a key and YOU are the one in wait mode, you might barely see the difference.

Answer 3

The PC-2700 RAM slows down the PC-3200 RAM from 400MHz to 333MHz.