How bad of an idea is it to mix and match...

[Dr Issac Kleiner]

1 pair of 2 gigs of OCZ 667 ddr 2 ram, and 1 pair of 2 gigs Gskill 800 ddr2 ram?

Let me explain...

It's for a pentium d system... Considering the price of ram I want REAL ram, not gskill...

I'm gonna add 4 gigs of corsair to my c2d system, and I need to do something with my gskill ram... And ebay would get me pennies...

So??

 

[Asus]

They will run at the slower memory speed between the 2, which ever has the worse timing they will both run at, if one can't manage 1T then they will both run at 2T etc. Or the board may beep with them all in and not be compatible together. But if there is no beeping then they should run. Who knows what it will be, plug it in and see.

Although 2GB vs 4GB on a Windows 32bit system means nothing regarding performance since Windows will only address 2GB by default (3GB max if modified). 64bit for 4GB+ addressing.

Pennies?

 

[Dr Issac Kleiner]

Actually 32bit oses use 2.5 gigs ram, and then use 1 gig in it's cache, so only 512 megs wouldn't be used.

The only downside is is that 1 gig gets used in cache so all it basically helps with is loading times and speed and all that.

And yes, it would be pennies. A year and a half used 667 ram. And ocz at that. And 2 gigs 667 ram today goes for $60. Look on fatwallet. Ram prices have dropped hugely.

DDR2 800 ram goes for $100, 2 gigs.

Your right though, it could not work. Or it could. That's why I'm asking . It will of course drop down to it's lowest speeds (ddr667 instead of ddr2800). I could always overclock to ddr2800.... But then you have the problem of cas latency, as you said...

The main thing I'm concerned about is when two different ram types (Not really speed types, but manfactuer types) are put together, usually, they don't like each other. That's what I'm afraid of.

Some systems, particularly, 8800 systems, you could put together certain ram types and get constant BSOD.

I know by hand you can put together a C2d and a ocz system and get BSOD.

 

[Asus]

It really varies by board and as far as I know they only test same brands together when doing compatibility checks. Unless someone has the same board and has the same memory models mixed together I don't think anyone could tell ya. I'd just give it a shot and put it through some stress tests.

Also, does your chipset support more than 3GB of ram? Some don't.

 

[Dr Issac Kleiner]

Up to 8 gigs.

c2d goes up to 16.

Not really worried about the size, just the fact that they are from different places... :|

EDIT: Just checked the manual, says 4 gigs for 32 bit, 8 gigs for 64...