[DDR PC3200] Mixing ram stick sizes?

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

SiD the Turtle

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Hey guys. I bought 2x1Gb DDR PC3200 for my brother for Christmas, to upgrade his P4 from 512Mb of RAM to 2Gb. The question is that I still have two free slots and the two old 256Mb sticks spare.

Now before I go and experiment, will the old sticks work alongside the new ones, giving him 2.5Gb of RAM? Are there any downsides to this?
 
Every stick has to run the same, so they will all run at the same speed of the slowest. Also different manufacturers and brands will all run at different voltages usually.. so you have to be careful.

Techinically, theres nothign to stop you mixing RAM, but you should cross check all their timings, frequencies and voltages before putting them in together or you might get bsod's, crashes etc.
 
I would stick to using the 2 sticks. Less burden on power filtering.

There may be a discrepancy between the oxidisation levels of the used to unused slots, which even if you used 4 matched sticks could lead to errors, it only takes one pin to be slightly more oxidized than the rest to burnout a stick.
 
i wouldnt bother, going from 2gig to 2.5gig is not going to make a difference in performance all that well.

and its just asking for trouble as EVERYTHING has to be the same on the old stuff as the new, speed, voltage timmings and i doubt this would be the case from a 256mb modual and a 1gig modual.

not worth it dude, but you can always give it a go...
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I did give it a try and it won't even boot with all four in even if I play with the various RAM settings, so two sticks it is!
 
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