mixing ram speeds

[Array]

no, it'll damage your motherboard.

[singularity2006]

it'll damage ur board? I highly doubt that. It should just auto underclock itself to the lowest speed. But I could be wrong assuming my assumption that DDR runs the same as SDRAM is incorrect. But I'm pretty sure it shouldn't screw things up.

[Cod]

Singularity2006 is correct when he states that the memory will automatically underclock itself to the lowest speed, in this case, being 266mHz. As long as both sticks are DDR, you're fine. The problems come when you start mixing SDRAM with DDR, DDR with Rambus, and any other combination you can think of; however, it will not damage your motherboard. The only thing would be that one of the sticks will not be recognized by the motherboard.

[imashination]

Originally posted by Array
no, it'll damage your motherboard.

er, no. The faster memory will simply slow down to the same speed as his slowest stick of RAM.

[Lukashi]

wouldnt it just run at what fsb speed i set? its currently 133 so i should run at 266 no mather what speed, right??

[imashination]

Ram is faily similar to that way CPUs are made. They make a whole load, then test to see how fast they can go. The better ones are sold as faster sticks while anything which doesn't cut it will be clocked down to a slower speed.

99% of the time you can use faster RAM in a slower machine with no problems. some motherboards will be picky though. gigabyte in particular seem to be funny this way.

[Array]

Originally posted by imashination
er, no. The faster memory will simply slow down to the same speed as his slowest stick of RAM.

well im not sure about other mobo's, but the manual for my Asus specifically says not to do so because it will damage my mobo.

[imashination]

Legal fluff to cover their back, thats all that is. In the same way that using rechargable batteries in a gameboy can cause a fire hazard and using unofficial heat paste on an AMD CPU will make it go up in flames....

*cough*

;-)

[ZrO-1]

You can absolutely install the faster 2700 DDR RAM in your system along side the 2100 DDR RAM. The 2700 RAM will run at 2100 speeds, that's all.

wouldnt it just run at what fsb speed i set? its currently 133 so i should run at 266 no mather what speed, right??

IMPORTANT! do not crank your front side bus up to 266MHz to try and get the faster RAM to run at it's native speed.

The 266MHz rating on the RAM is a DOUBLE of the FSB speed; hence the Double-Data-Rate (DDR) part of the memory. 133MHz x 2 = 266MHz. 166MHz x 2 = 333MHz

Cranking up your FSB will overclock your processor, since it's timing is a multiple of the FSB speed. If you cranked it up to 266MHz (if it could even go that high) you would fry everything before you even got past the POST.

Just get the new 2700 RAM if you want it (you can always keep it if you buy a new system with 333MHz RAM support) and let it run at the slower speeds.

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