Ramming Speed!

posted on February 9th, 2010, 4:55 pm

I have a HP - Compaq Pavilion Media Center m8200n PC, with 3GB ram (I believe 2x 1GB and 2x 512 MB).  I'm looking to spend the money to get more ram, maybe even get the full 8GB that my motherboard will allow.  I looked up on crucial to figure out what ram I could have support.  Here is what I can have:

Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-6400,DDR2 PC2-8500,DDR2 PC2-5300 with a maximum of 2GB per slot.  (I'm doing a little copy/paste from cruicial)

So I looked up on New Egg and Tiger Direct.  New Egg has some really great deals on PC2-8500.  I really like this one, the product reviews were good, and whatnot. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227289&cm_re=DDR2_PC2-8500-_-20-227-289-_-Product

In fact, OCZ is having this rebate deal, which is pretty nice.  The catch is only one rebate per customer for this promotion, So if I buy 2, I only get to do one rebate. 

Is it really important/affect speed if I have two different brands (probably not)?  Or should all my ram be the same speed?  (PC2-8500)  Also, if it were you, would you buy 4 GB (2x2GB) now, and then wait for a better deal?  I'd have 6 GB then, I'm not sure what the speed of the current ram that I have now is.

Also, I've bought an upgrade for Windows 7 and will upgrade from Vista 32 to 7 x64.  Should I install Win 7 x64 first and then add the ram?  Or add the ram and install Win 7?  I've heard that putting the ram in first can be a hassle for some reason.  But that's part of why I'm posting, to get some expert advice from people I trust.  When I research this stuff, I hear a whole bunch of rumors and I don't have the background to know what's myth vs. fact.  

If anyone has thoughts to these questions, I would love to hear them.  Or if anyone knows a really good site that will help me continue my research so I don't mess up the upgrade or make the wrong ram purchase.  Or a site with better deals than Tiger Direct and New Egg.  People on these forums have a wealth of knowledge, and I would be foolish not to tap into that.

posted on February 9th, 2010, 5:04 pm

Install first then add the RAM. I'm sure you're aware that 32bit can only take 4GB RAM, whereas 64 is essentially limitless in terms of the RAM it can handle.

posted on February 9th, 2010, 5:25 pm

The companies will have you believe that you should get a matched pair (sequential releases off the same production line etc). In reality, keeping the same brand and model throughout probably make a bit of difference but it's not a massive amount. Fortunately, you can often get good deals on matched pairs that turn out cheaper than buying them separate anyway, so you might as well get them if the price is right.

The more important things to consider are things like RAM speeds and to a lesser degree the individual clock speeds on each stick. The RAM speed is critical as the whole system will only run at the speed of the slowest component. So if you buy 2 sticks of 667MHZ DDR2 and have 1 stick that is rated at 1066MHz then the faster stick will be scaled back to 667MHz.

There's a whole lot of other bumf but to be honest, it's pretty much irrelevant unless you're intending on overclocking.

posted on February 9th, 2010, 5:44 pm

I agree with everything Phoenix and Proton just said.

posted on February 9th, 2010, 5:57 pm

Awesome!

I just found a program called System Information for Windows, and it pretty much lists all the specs of everything on your PC.  I guess my ram speed is 333 MHz, so it's definitely time to upgrade.

posted on February 9th, 2010, 7:28 pm

I guess my ram speed is 333 MHz, so it's definitely time to upgrade.

this was already mentioned but im rising my posts count so:
the idea is to have 2+ sticks with same memory size. its also good to have same speed and timings (CL) on them. here is what u r aiming for Dual-channel architecture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
b4 u buy anything i would suggest to make some tests and check how far from ur max u r.

posted on February 9th, 2010, 9:21 pm

It's probably a good idea to be aware of RAM configuration when mixing and matching like latency and timings. I have had this turn out badly and I have had other rigs with mixed RAM work for years. For the most part motherboards will default to the best possible RAM speed and timing adjusted for your slowest stick... so for example if you have two 533 sticks and two 800mhz sticks they will all run at 533... which in most cases is perfectly acceptable but ram timings can be trickier. for example latency etc. But you can usually set this in the BIOS to something which all the RAM sticks can handle.

posted on February 10th, 2010, 6:53 pm

If the motherboard is decent enough then I believe the clock setting are automatically derived to best suit your configuration. You have to be a bit careful when getting in to fiddling with these settings. I've no doubt that they'll give a bit of a boost if set correctly, but it's easy to push them just a bit too far and then suffer the consequence of having your system fail to boot to windows and or just not boot at all. Clock settings are something to look into for the avid overclocker.

In most regular cases, a decent motherboard with some decent RAM should work within acceptable limits, even if mismatched, for as little effort as a simple swap in/out job. Everything should be automatically set by the system when it loads with the RAM installed. It really depends on many many factors as to how well things will work out. Dual Channel is claimed to give you up to 10% additional performance but again, this depends on many factors (one being whether your motherboard even supports Dual Channel!)