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Is it ok to Mix two diff DC rams?

645 Views 10 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  Phaedrus2129
Hey all,

I own a MSI K9N SLI mobo and right now I own Corsair 2gb DC ram.

I want to get some more ram and looking @ the Crucial Ballistix 4GB (DC).

Would it be ok to mix the ram on the mobo?

One more quick question, I recently upGraded to Win7, but 32-bit. Knowing that I will be up to 6gb of ram, I am sure that using 32-bit OS it will only read 4-gb, right?



Thanks,
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It depends. Usually it will work if you manually set the speed and timings. Also depends on the ram and memory controller.

edit:

And yes the 32 bit OS won't read more than 4 gigs, so mixing them is a moot point anyways.
Quote:


Originally Posted by shift
View Post

Hey all,

I own a MSI K9N SLI mobo and right now I own Corsair 2gb DC ram.

I want to get some more ram and looking @ the Crucial Ballistix 4GB (DC).

Would it be ok to mix the ram on the mobo?

One more quick question, I recently upGraded to Win7, but 32-bit. Knowing that I will be up to 6gb of ram, I am sure that using 32-bit OS it will only read 4-gb, right?



Thanks,

I have 2 mixed brands of DC. They work fine together. You are limited by the lower speed pair.
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2
it will work, but dont expect to get much overclocking done
Yes, it's fine to mix RAM, but it can cause odd results when overclocking because of two reasons: RAM doesn't always overclock the same, and may have different limits; north bridges can have issues with more sticks of RAM.

My bets are that you'll be fine though. You probably won't need 6GB of RAM though... I've had 2GB, 4GB, 6GB and 8GB of RAM in my system, and I noticed no difference between 4GB and up; the difference between 2GB and 4GB was pretty large though.
When I was on another computer, I had 2x1GB Kingston HyperX 667MHz and 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer 800MHz pairs running side-by-side, and even overclocked to 1066MHz. No issues whatsoever. Yes, it will work, 99% of the time.
It will work just fine as long as both sets follow the same standard(IE DDR, DDR2, etc etc).

If one set is slower, the faster set will underclock to match. Unless it's an Asus board, then it might just try to OC the slower to match the faster. I had that happen once.
But if the board follows the standards, it will work fine.
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All thanks. I know my max is 4gb due to the 32-bit, but I can get 4gb cheaper then 2gb. Believe that? LoL.

So if I was to go with the 4 (total of 6gb ram) vs going with 2gb it should still run about the same, correct?

I may in the future upgrade to the 64bit OS / Win7 in the near future.
Let us know how it goes. I never got my X2 4000+ to work with mixed ram, let alone 4 sticks of ram. It would always crash just as soon as it loads Vista.
Quote:

Originally Posted by shift View Post
All thanks. I know my max is 4gb due to the 32-bit, but I can get 4gb cheaper then 2gb. Believe that? LoL.

So if I was to go with the 4 (total of 6gb ram) vs going with 2gb it should still run about the same, correct?

I may in the future upgrade to the 64bit OS / Win7 in the near future.
6GB would be exactly the same as 4GB in this case.

I'd probably just sell the 2GB of RAM and use the 4GB. I've never had an occasion where I've needed more than 4GB.
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Make sure that the clock speed and voltage are the same. Voltage is especially important; I fried a stick of RAM once by running a 1.9V kit with a 2.2V kit, and the 2.2V won.

It's always best to get identical RAM so you know 100% sure it will work, but as long as the clock speed and voltage are the same it should be a 90%+ chance it will work, and having the same timings helps too.
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