Can you mix different CAS ram?

[holdencommodore]

Is it possible to run cas 3 and cas2 RAM on an motherboard? Would they use an individual latency? My specs are as below...
thanks

 

[AndyHui]

Yes, you can mix RAM of different latency, but the motherboard will run them at the slowest common speed, ie if you have CAS2 and CAS3 RAM, both DIMMs will be run at CAS3.

 

[JustStarting]

Or you set set it at cas2 in the bios- it will probably run fine. Most cas3 stuff will run at cas2- you just wont be able to bump up the settings much over default speed (ie.- 133mhz in your case). Get a good bump in memory scores also.

 

[heng1028]

it is strange that i will can use after i mixed them together

i used to have generic PC133 256mb Ram running @ 143 CAS222, it will never boot over 143

after i added 1 stick of infineon 256mb ram i can run at 147 @cas222 now

i wonder why

 

[holdencommodore]

Thanks for the replies!

I think I'll have to leave it at SPD, as setting it manually gives me lower scores on the Pro2-A. I am very tempted to get an extra 128 MB of memory (so then I'll have 256MB), as it is very cheap at the moment - $79AUD for 128 MB Hyundai PC133 (only CAS3)... How does Hyundai memory fair???
Would the extra memory effect the performance if you are doing Photoshop work / multitasking or gaming?

 

[heng1028]

i do not recommend Hyundai ram

see this

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=393993

and this

http://www.bxboards.com/pc133/p133-10.shtml

 

[holdencommodore]

so do you reckon that it's better to get the same NCP stuff? (can't afford much more than that)

 

[Quatsino]

256MB (2 x 128MB PC133 CAS3) of NCP worked very well in my A7V. The performance increase if you're using Photoshop is worth every nickel - it's cheap now anyway.

 

[heng1028]

actually NCP is one kind of generic

but it is not bad at all, i can hit my NCP to 143 CAS222

 

[techfuzz]

I would like to point out another thread I had going about RAM especially good memory like Crucial vs. No-name brand. I have some backmarks that you might be interested in.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=396685

One more bit of info, my motherboard would run at the lowest CAS speed of my memory EVEN if I set it to run at CAS2 in the BIOS! It wasn't until I had all CAS2 memory that my motherboard would run in CAS2 mode. I verified this with SiSoft by swapping some CAS3 with CAS2.

 

[holdencommodore]

Thanks for the benchmark info techfuzz.
I think I may keep all the memory the same brand (NCP) is that a good idea?