Is ram of the same type ie ddr400 but made by different companies completly compatible with each other. Is it bad to combine say a 512 stick with a 1024 stick. And are there any general rules on the combinations of ram sticks Lastly will there be issues if you combine good and bad quality sticks. or will the bad quality ram just be the bottle neck. Thanx
Different types of memory may slow your system down. If you have a PC2700 stick, and a PC3200 stick, the former would become a bottleneck. It depends on the bus speed of your processor and motherboard. If you install one stick of PC100, and one stick of PC133, and your CPU and motherboard speed is only 100MHz, then you would not experience any bottleneck. But you would not get the full speed from the PC133 stick (it would only operate at 100MHz, not 133MHz) Memory manufactured by different brands should be compatible with each other. As long as they are the same type. You should never use bad quality memory, so that question is a bit silly! Memory of different sizes is fine
About the good and bad ram. I just wanted to know cuz when i oc i will have already bought my corsair stick. seeing that i have a crappy stick now i just wanted to know if its gonna be a bad idea to run them together for now. It was a dumb ques though. Thanx anyway
Generic RAM and mre expensive branded sticks can work together, as long as you don't try to overclock past the generic module's limits.
Performance RAM can usually run at higher speeds with tighter latencies. Generally the Value RAM runs with higher latencies at slower speeds, for example a module of performance RAM may be able to run @ 500Mhz with timings of 2-2-2-5 (GEIL 1-Series claims it can I think) and Value RAM may only be able to reach 410MHz with latencies of 3-4-4-8. You would probably not be able to run the two sticks of RAM together at anything higher than 410MHz without stability issues (as this is the highest speed of the installed RAM modules) and at that speed the performance RAM may have to loosen its timings to match those of the value RAM as running RAM with different latencies is a no-no.
i have my value ddr ram running at 422mhz (3-4-4-8) when i enable performance thing on my gigabyte mobo, i end up having the timings at about somthing like 2-5-5-5.
