[xguntherc]

Hey guys, I'm working on a system for a friend of the family. It's a slightly older Compaq PC thats running XP SP3 and 512MB of PC3200 ram. I wiped XP, and Formatted some Viruses and years of junk away. Now it's running much better but I'm adding more ram.

The PC has a single stick of DDR PC3200 (400 Mhz) CL2.5 Ram.. and all I have in my house to use is a stick of similar 512mb PC3200 (400 Mhz) CL3.

Can I use 2x512mb PC3200 sticks, one being CL2.5 and the other being CL3. I have them both in the system right now. and the way it looks the CL3 stick went down to 2.5 but the speed also dropped to PC2700. but it's not running at PC2700's 333 Mhz. it's doing 328Mhz.. lol

Thoughts, will the faster run at slowers speed and be stable? or should I try to Craigslist another pc3200 to match?

 

[xguntherc]

seems stable.. I've not tried anything to hard yet though. I think it may have defaulted the CL3 down to 2.5 and pc2700. so it looks ok, but I thought I'd ask you all. I know generally mixing is not a good idea, but it's all i have.

 

[thenutty1]

I would manually change the timings in the BIOS. Try setting both sticks timings to 3-3-3-8 @ 200Mhz (400Mhz).

 

[xguntherc]

It's an old Compaq, basically a HP. They don't let you do things like that in the BIOS. or I would have already.. lol but thanks for the suggestion. I'm not new to changing BIOS settings and overclocking. See sig.

Yea. I can't change the timings, but I've been on it installing itunes, and WMP, and Avast, and a few other things. even playing a movie and so far it's ok. I think it's stable. She doesn't use it for much anyways.