RAM question

Elimination

right i i've got 4gb of DDR2 800 in dual channel (a pair of 2gb sticks) i also have another 2gb stick that is not part of said matched pair and is of a lower speed, and a 1gb stick of the same lower speed (667).

So, 4gb of faster ram, or 7gb of slower. Or can i even do that? And yes i have a 64bit OS.

Buttcleft

Depends on what you do, Gaming and high performance shit? 4gigs of faster ram.

Large photo of movie editing? 7gigs is gonna be alot more useful.

taliosfalcon

The easiest way to tell is to monitor your ram usage while doing whatever you usually use your computer for, if your physical ram usage ever goes above 90% or so its probably dipping into your pagefile more than it should and more ram would give a noticeable speed increase irregardless of speed

stigweard

IIRC, and this may no longer be true, I believe that 32 bit apps are limited to 2GB of private addressable ram no matter which version of the os you have. Unless you are going to be doing heavy multitasking, 4GB is going to be fine.

Chalkbot

Everything that's already been said.

You would need to have a very unique scenario to benefit more from the 7gb configuration.

Ego

I'd say 4gb faster over 7gb slower for most users. BUT if you regularly get hard drive paging while computing, you ought to try 7gb to see if it works better for ya.

What you may wish to consider doing is running your old 2gb stick at DDR800 speed in dual channel mode with one of your new 2gb sticks. If it works (and it will handle the speed unless you're unlucky --the point is to test for dual channel compatibility with one of your new modules) you can just snag yourself another 2gb stick of the same sort you currently have, and run 8gb dual channel @ 800, happy as... some sort of ... bivalve mollusk that has a lot of memory.

OremLK

4gb of faster.

Elimination

Ahhh ok, i figured the 4gb would be the better choice, but i figured i'd get some opinions on it none the less.

psychotix

4gb is faster. But it's not really the speed of the ram (in MHZ) that matters as much as it is the latency. Case in point, ddr2 800mhz at C4 is going to beat ddr2 1066 at C6 for speed, just less OC head room.

If this isn't for a dell or other OEM you could always over volt the RAM and manually force it all to ddr2 800mhz, and probably get away with C5.

wunderbar

7GB would be useless unless you have a 64bit OS anyway.