RAM upgrade

[smatthews34]

Hello. I'm planning on upgrading my memory in my computer. I have an ASUS AN78X board with an AMD Athlon XP 1800 processor. Currently I have 512MB of PC2700. I'd like to upgrade to 1 gig, and wasn't sure if I should take out the pc2700 and go with pc3200 instead. I notice they're about the same price. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[SynthDude2001]

It really doesn't matter...your FSB (assuming your CPU is not overclocked) would limit the RAM speed to PC2100 anyway. I am pretty sure you can mix different speeds of RAM too without problems, so since they're the same price I'd recommend just going with PC3200 (adding it to what you already have, unless you particularly feel like actually buying a gig of PC3200 since it's so cheap these days), so you may be able to recycle that for a future upgrade...

 

[Tostada]

I assume you actually mean the ASUS ASUS A7N8X.

Your CPU runs at 11.5 x 133 (DDR266) = 1533 MHz.

PC2100 = DDR266
PC2700 = DDR333
PC3200 = DDR400

Your current PC2700 is probably only running at DDR266 unless it's running asynchronously. Your motherboard supports PC3200, but when you mix memory it'll default to the lowest speed.

If you just add a 512MB stick of PC3200, everything will run fine at either DDR266 or DDR333. You won't be using the full potential of your PC3200, but it won't make much of any difference -- it's certainly not worth throwing away your old memory.

 

[Tostada]

With that motherboard you could just go into your BIOS and change the Memory Frequency setting to [125%], then it would run all sticks of memory at PC2700. I don't know if that would really be an improvement over setting it to [Sync], though, as there is as slight penalty for running your memory at a different speed than your CPU, and there's not a huge benefit from having your memory running faster than bus speed, especially when it's already dual-channel.

 

[Jiggz]

Keep the PC2700 and as for the new ram, get the fastest you can get at the same price you intent to spend.