I have a question about memory speed

[foodstamps]

I have a computer with a configuration of 7GB ddr2 ram. It has 4gb of PC6400 and 3gb of PC5200. Should I remove the 3gb or should I keep it in there. Which yields better performance?

I game mostly.

 

[taltamir]

more ram > faster ram

 

[F1shF4t]

Keep the 7GB (Assuming your using a 64bit os)

 

[evilspoons]

Make sure you're running in dual channel mode. Having mismatched RAM configurations can boot you into single-channel, in which case all your RAM will be WAYYYYYY slower.

Download and run CPU-Z and go to the Memory tab. If it says "Channels #: Dual" you're OK and can deal with the possibly-lower clocks/frequency you're getting from the PC2-5200. If it says Single you're halving your available memory bandwidth, which is a Bad Thing and you should drop down to just the 4 GB.

I remember reading somewhere (possibly here @ Anandtech) that over 4 GB currently serves no real purpose unless you have 17 programs open at once or if you're a special case like HD video editing, giant photo editing (many many megapixels), 3D rendering, or scientific applications.

(Obviously this will change in the future, but by then you probably won't have a PC with DDR2 RAM anyway).

Note that like F1shF4t said you need to have a 64-bit operating system to see any benefit from over 4 GB of RAM and if you don't have one, you're just slowing down your 4 GB unnecessarily and wasting energy.