Hey folks, RAM upgrade question.

[RyanW2050]

I'm currently running:

AMD 3200+ Venice
nVidia 7800GT
EPOX 9NPA+ultra motherboard
Fortron FSP Saga 450W PSU
1 gig (2 x 512MB) CORSAIR ValueSelect 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)



Now, at the time of construction of this system, I didn't have the cash for 2 gigs of ram.



From my limited knowledge of PC building, I was thinking that upping it to 2gb ram would be the biggest improvement for gaming.

I have heard things about problems happening with all 4 slots of memory filled. Would it be ok if I bought 2 gigs (2 x 1024mb) and put them in the other slots? Next to the current ones?


Or would I have to remove the current and just use the 2x1024?






Thanks all

 

[secretanchitman]

if you are overclocking, your overclock will probably go down a bit. and i think on amd mobos, the memory divider drops down to 333 from 400. not totally sure, but i remember reading a huge thread on it back in the day of athlon64 OCing...

if you arent, then putting in another two sticks would be a-okay.

personally, i would just have 2x1GB in there.

 

[RyanW2050]

No, I don't overclock anything. I put it all together and started playing games.




I was reading a few websites and found these comments:

EPOX support said this about 1024 dual channel sticks

Yes it will but the speed, 333 or 400DDR depends from the CPU you use.
The newer AMD64 Venice and Sandiego core will support DDR400 with 1024
modules.
With the older cores you need to have luck. (extra info, the memory
controller is inside the CPU core)

So, my AMD 3200+ Venice. -should- be able to run them all at 400?




Now, the only question is, what happens with the command rate?

I guess with 2x512 and 2x1024 I would be dropped to 2T command rate.... I was reading a study which was pointing out that 2x512 > 4x512 in performance....

I'm not sure if that was including the 400 -> 333 drop or the 1T -> 2T drop or both..