Adding RAM... leave the original stuff in?

Nealio

Nealio

Nealio

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16 Jan 2008
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Clevedon
I currently have a Phenom II system on a Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P motherboard.

I have 4Gb of Corsair XMS3 1600MHz memory as 2X2Gb sticks.

I want to add more RAM so the question is:

If I buy another 2X4Gb sticks (either the same XMS3 model or not) is there any disadvantage to leaving the current 4Gb in place to make a total of 12Gb with all 4 slots populated, or would it better to run just the 2 new 4Gb sticks?

I guess the question boils down to: does it still run in 'dual channel mode' if all 4 slots are populated (with different capacities)?
 
Excellent, thanks.

Also, I want to upgrade to an i5 system in the not-too distant future, is the XMS 3 memory good to use with intel or should I choose a different type to ensure compatibility and performance?
 
I had 6gb (3x2gb) and bought 12gb (3x4gb) and was originally going to sell the 6gb and just have the 12gb. In the end the system boots up and runs fine with all the sticks in (18gb in total) - just had to ease the timings off from 8-8-8 to 9-9-9 but it doesn't seem to have affected benchmarck scores or my overclock at all, so left it all in and created a 4gb ram drive to play with :-)
 
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