DDR400 and DDR266 memory question

[mburgio]

I just installed a new Asus A8NX7-E Deluxe motherboard which supports DDR400 SD3200 ram. I got a 512MB module with the motherboard. I was told that if I put inferior memory in as well, the DDR400 module wont work to its full abilities. My question is, will I get better performance with one 512MB DDR400 SD3200 chip, or better performance with one 512MB DDR400 SD3200, and two 256MB DDR266 SD2100 chips for a total of 1GB memory but mixed modules?

 

[Matthias99]

If you're running games or other programs that can really use a full GB of RAM, I'd say to go with the mixed DIMMS, even though it means you'll be running at a slower memory speed (this is less critical on AMD systems than on Intel). If you don't think you'll be using more than 512MB of RAM (you can check the 'peak commit charge' in Task Manager to see what your maximum RAM usage has been after you've been running for a while), I'd go with the 512MB of faster RAM.

I suspect you'd see better performance with 1GB of slower RAM that 512MB of faster RAM with most new games, or if you multitask heavily. Even "slow" RAM is way, way faster than the paging file on your hard drive -- if you start hitting that, your programs will slow down a *lot*.

 

[mburgio]

Yeah I definately play games. Half Life 2 and what not. So it would benefit from the 1GB of mixed RAM vs. 512MB of the DDR400?