Is it better to populate all the Memory slots on a motherboard?

[mitchelt]

I was reading the "Intel 845 DDR Motherboard Roundup" and a bunch of threads talking about the optimal memory amounts for running Win XP.

It seemed like most people said 768Mb - 1Gb would be sweet.

OK, the 2 motherboards I am looking at have 3 memory slots (MSI 845 Ultra and the Gigabyte P4 Titan DDR...might as well go with the top 2 winners 🙂 )

768Mb = 3ea. 256Mb

1Gb = 2ea. 512Mb

Is it better to fill all the memory slots, or is using 2 of the 3 OK?

I would hate to think that I would have to get: 2ea. 512Mb and 1ea. smallest DIMM for the third slot.

If it matters, I do not overclock, the system will have a Gforce3 ti200, and stability sure sounds nice. 🙂

As always...THANKS!

Mitch

 

[AndyHui]

The i845 chipset only supports 4 Rows of RAM.

This means that you can only have a maximum of 2 double sided DIMMs, or 1 double sided DIMM and 2 single sided DIMMs.

I usually recommend against filling all slots if possible....many motherboards these days have stability problems with all DIMM slots filled.

 

[mitchelt]

AndyHui...thanks for clearing that Up!

But now it opens up a new questions:

To get 768Mb I would need: 1ea 512Mb and 1ea 256Mb

Is that OK, or is it better not to mix memory sizes when dealing with DDR memory?

Thanks!

Mitch

 

[AndyHui]

1 x 256 DIMM and 1 x 512MB DIMM is fine.