Mixing Ram?

[Kyle]

Hey-
I read on a BBS, that it is really not good to mix different brands of ram, and that it can cause crash's/instability. I had been using one of STEP-Thermodynamics 128meg PC133, and recently added a stick of Cruical's Cas2 PC133 ram (128meg). Do you think this will hurt performance? Would I be better to switch out the STEP ram with another stick of the Cruical? Just wondering if it is worth another $70.
Thanks
-Kyle

 

[Jonny]

I don't think so. Will your old stuff run at cas 2 also?

I recently sold my pc 100 cas 3, and bought 256mb pc133 cas 2 infinion. To be honest, I cannot see a speed increase.

I say if you can run your old stuff at cas 2 with your cruical stuff, and it's stable, keep it.

 

[Mem]

If they are working fine together & it`s stable I would not bother changing the ram,on the other hand if you have problems with stability then this is probably the cause.BTW is that CAS2 or CAS3 (Thermodynamics) ram?

 

[Kyle]

Well, the Ram was advertised at 133 Cas3, but I have always run it at cas2, and it's ran fine.
Yeah, I'll probably just keep it, but thought I would run it by you guys to see what ya thought.

 

[larrymoencurly]

I heard that a guy actually got killed by mixing different RAM.

 

[jamarno]

This is an old myth, and you can mix different brands or even different speeds of RAM as long as the computer doesn't operate faster than allowed for the slowest RAM. Besides if RAM really had to match, most computers couldn't run at all because the individual bits in a RAM chip probably vary in speed by 50%, and a long time ago they varied by 300%.

 

[Kyle]

ok, thats good to know. Glad I didnt go buy another stick of crucial.

 

[borealiss]

actually i have an amd system that has a mistubishi stick and a NEC stick in it, and although both are rated at cas2, they can only be in the motherboard in a certain order. otherwise, crashes galore. the sticks are decent quality imo, and the motherboard is msi, the model escapes me at the moment. even at cas3, it still does it. weird huh?

 

[cbwolf]

Nah, it shouldn't case any instability, crashes ect.

 

[SlickVic]

Old wives tale...mix em'

 

[novice]

larrymoencurly wrote:
"I heard that a guy actually got killed by mixing different RAM."

(Just as long as it doesn't make you sterile !!!

Seriously I was almost ROFL. Great comment on the perils of "mixed rammage".

Chuck

 

[shurato]

Here's one somewhat extreme...ok well not too extreme at all.. i have a crucial pc133 128 cas2 stick and a 256 pc100 cas2 kingston value ram... ive had it running stable rock solid at pc140 cas2 in my mobo... dunno the paranoid me made me just set it back to pc133 cas 2... never had a problem yet.

 

[jamarno]

Borealiss, I had the same problem, only the DIMMs were identical and had Micron chips with the same date code. Each DIMM tested fine individually with a diagnostic that took almost 36 hours.