Mixing Ram sizes

ElvisFan · 17 Jan 2008 at 18:30

I've currently got two 512 mb sticks of PNY PC3200 in my PC, running in dual channel.

What would be the effect of putting a generic brand 1 gb stick in the remaining slot?

I'm not into overclocking or gaming.

Yellowbeard · 17 Jan 2008 at 22:44

What MOBO+CPU do you have?

ElvisFan · 18 Jan 2008 at 00:56

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe + Athlon 2800 running at 200x10

Yellowbeard · 18 Jan 2008 at 01:22

On that chipset you will lose dual channel operation if you are using it but, that is probably not a big deal on NF2. However, with all 3 DIMM slots filled, you will likely be forced back to 166mhz or DDR333. You may be able to manually clock it back up to DDR400. Also, in some odd cases, mixing different densities of memory can cause stability problems or even cause the system not to boot. The only way to know for sure is to install and test. Your safest route if you need more memory would be to put in a matched pair of 1gb modules so that you are not mixing densities and are only using 2 slots.