question about memory compatibility?

[snoopdiggy]

Hey guys, new to the forum here....

quick question:

I have old MSI KT7Pro motherboard, Athlon 800mhz T-bird,Geforce2, etc.etc...

I just recently bought a Crucial 256MB PC133 CL2 stick of RAM, and I was wondering if it would be ok to stick my old Crucial PC133 CL3 RAM in the 2nd slot? Would it affect performance? I mean, make it any worse than if I were to just have the 256 in there?

Also, what do you guys think of Corsair and OCSystems memory? They were the cheapest CL2 PC2700 RAM i could find (building another system)....

thanks

 

[snoopdiggy]

can nobody help me?

 

[Kobian]

As far as i know u shouldnt have a problem.
If ur worried about the peformance , run sisoft sandra memory benchmark with only the 256MB PC133 CL2 ram , and then compare it with both the 256MB PC133 CL2 and ??? MB PC133 CL3 RAM in the system.

Good Luck.

 

[dszd0g]

Your motherboard should automatically drop down to CL3. You can try forcing it to CL2 (which will overclock your older memory), but it may adversely effect stability. It will most likely work fine though. Keep in mind though, that the more sticks of DIMM in a system the higher the latency needs to be for system stability. Your CL3 memory might overclock to CL2 fine if it is the only memory in the system, but not if their are two DIMMs installed.

If you stick with CL3 there is a tradeoff between better latency and more memory. If you use the more memory then it will provide better performance, but if you don't it will perform worse. It really depends on what you do with your computer. I would think that most benchmarks would show worse performance, because they do not use the memory. Your real world performance may vary.