Can disimilar memory architectures work in the same system?

[MadRat]

Back in the Intel 430TX days there were boards that supported 5V DRAM in both SIMM and DIMM packages on the same board. I could fill up all of the memory slots and they had no problem working together.

Would it be possible to design a motherboard in the conventional sense that used two types of different memory types? I figure it wouldn't be real easy as you'd need to somehow prioritize them so that you didn't store duplicate information in each memory system.

 

[Hender]

Technically something like that is feasible, but why even bother? Systems like that were designed so that people could migrate from SIMMs to DIMMs as the new memory standard emerged. Now it's between DDR and RDRAM, but both are for use primarily on one platform or another (with the exception of the new P4 chipsets), and there is no new standard of memory emerging.

 

[eLiu]

And back then..RAM cost a bundle, so people might not have wanted to throw away their RAM for a new standard. Now, with 256 costing $30, and 128 something like $15, why even bother?

 

[MadRat]

Because I'd love to have an 1GHz memory module to plug in as an option. So what if 16MB is equal in cost to 256MB of SDRAM, the performance in some aspects would be more than worth it. Plus it would make FSB less of a hinderance to overall system performance.