4 x 512mb sticks?

Sweetloaf · 23 Jan 2007 at 16:44

Currently using 2 x 512mb Geil Ultra PC4000 sticks in an MSI K8N mobo, it's running at its max rated speed at the minute (250) 1T and I'm now after upping it to 2GB.

It would be far cheaper to simply add 2 x 512 sticks than buy a new 2GB kit.

What problems am I likely to hit running 4 sticks? if any.

Running a single core AMD Opteron and XP Home.

Thanks.

steve258 · 23 Jan 2007 at 17:20

Have not actually tried 4 sticks myself but from what I read system will default to 2T for better compatibility.

Also if you add in RAM with different timings BIOS will default to the slowest one of the four.

Sweetloaf · 23 Jan 2007 at 17:59

I'm looking at two sticks of Identical RAM.

When you say it defaults to 2T will it run at 1T do you think?

steve258 · 23 Jan 2007 at 19:46

If all 4 sticks are identical you may be able to run at same timings at same Mhz as before. You can try but so far I have not seen anyone running 1T with 4 sticks.

The other thing that might happen is it may switch to DDR333 speed instead of DDR400, but I'd imagine it only happens when you have mixed RAM.

Trusty · 23 Jan 2007 at 23:35

The ram will go to 2T but the performance hit is minimal. The performance increase you will see with 2gb of ram instead of 1gb is massive!

Yellowbeard · 24 Jan 2007 at 22:39

The safest option is to add 2 x 1gb. In some cases, mixing ICs will cause problems such as instabilities. It is possible for it to not boot when mixing. 4 DIMMs will also limit your OC as compared to 2 x 1gb if you are OCing.

HangTime · 24 Jan 2007 at 23:36

On an AMD you will almost certainly have to run at 2T which gives a small performance hit, but certainly nothing like the hit you get from disk paging if you run out of memory

The biggest problem these days is DDR pricing/availabilty.

Sweetloaf · 25 Jan 2007 at 06:00

Yellowbeard said:
4 DIMMs will also limit your OC as compared to 2 x 1gb if you are OCing.

But all 4 should be capable of running at 250Mhz surely (PC4000)

HangTime said:
The biggest problem these days is DDR pricing/availabilty.

I've just aquired 2 extra 512mb sticks for a good price second hand. They are identical to those alrady installed.

It was £60 for an extra 2x512mb or around £220 for a 2GB kit of PC4000

Sweetloaf · 27 Jan 2007 at 09:04

I can now say that this has been a total success

Cleared CMOS, stuck in the RAM and after 30 mins or so was back at my initial overclock (255 x11) totally hassle free, albeit at 2T. Not gonna bother trying 1T due to the unlikelyhood of it actually working.

Cheers for the info guys! :cool:

Yellowbeard · 27 Jan 2007 at 12:26

IIRC, the last time I OCed a system with 2 DIMMs then switched to 4 DIMMs was last year on my A8N32 SLI w/Opty 165. With 4 x 512mb of PC4400C2.5, I could only get to 250mhz. With 2 x 512mb of the same RAM I could get to about 282. IMO, your 255mhz is a sweet OC with 4 DIMMs, good work.

Sweetloaf · 27 Jan 2007 at 13:17

Yellowbeard said:
your 255mhz is a sweet OC with 4 DIMMs, good work.

To be honest, I've yet to try higher, I bought an Opteron 148 in the hope of getting 2.7 (FX57) speeds, when I got that with my RAM at 1:1 I kind of stopped while I was happy....well I pushed it a little further to 2.8 as you do

It may go higher, I'll find out when I need to