Memory running at slower speed

[elrasho]

I have upgraded from 2 512MB PC3200 sticks to 4 512MB PC3200 sticks

Before the upgrade the two sticks were running at 400Mhz, now they all run at 333Mhz!
I have a Asus A8N-SLI mobo with Athlon 64 3200

Whats happend?

 

[Asus]

It automatically clocked it down. Happens a lot when you go to 4 sticks because it makes sure they run stable. Most chipsets can't handle too many banks of memory at full speed. That's why I always recommend 2 sticks of whatever size. (Banks are not memory slots but groups of chips on the memory itself)

Explaination.
Performance impact with each platform with using too many banks (lower is better).

 

[elrasho]

I wish someone had told me that before

Its not going to make too much of a performance hit is it?

 

[Link]

Depends on the game. Games that use a lot of RAM may run faster with 2 gigs of slower ram than 1 gig of faster. Older games that use less than a gig anyway will be slower, but it shouldn't be a huge hit.

 

[Asus]

It shouldn't make that much difference. After all most games will take advantage of 2GB memory. That speed up will be a lot more than any slow down DDR400->DDR333 would do.

Look at the benchmark I linked above (2nd link). You can see the 1GB A64 system (2x512MB @ DDR400) didn't do too much better than the 1.5GB A64 system (3x512MB @ DDR333). The P4 system did a lot worse with the memory penalty.

 

[Tyguy]

Subquestion:

I have two 1Gb sticks of 3200, is it worth an upgrade to 6400, possibly 2 sticks of 2Gb?

 

[giant384]

dang why are you running 400mhz ram in ddr2? yes there is a huge difference between pc3200 and 6400. a 400mhz difference to be exact.

 

[Asus]

Subquestion:

I have two 1Gb sticks of 3200, is it worth an upgrade to 6400, possibly 2 sticks of 2Gb?

Are we talking about OCed DDR memory or DDR2 speeds?

 

[giant384]

Are we talking about OCed DDR memory or DDR2 speeds?

its ddr2 there is no such thing as an 800mhz ddr stick. also they have pc3200 in ddr2.