Computer memory question (help!)

[Case]

Just bought a new computer, anyway to cut a long story short the company screwed up my order and put in 667mhz ram instead of 800mhz that I paid for. In return they have said I can keep the slower ram and have sent me the correct 800mhz ram. Now big question is whats the best way to deal with this ram, can the 667mhz be overclocked to 800mhz? Will running 667mhz and 800mhz cause major problems or would I be best just running with 2 gig of 800mhz?

Anyone got any ideas? BTW I'm running Vista home premium with a 6600 dual core processor

2GB, Corsair™ XMS2 Twin2x2048-5400C4, 667MHz
2GB, Corsair™ XMS2 Twin2x2048-6400C4, 800MHz

nvidia 680i motherboard

Suggestions please?

 

[Mojo]

Ebay the 667mhz ram

 

[Gamah]

Yes Ebay..don't fuck about with diff mem speeds it will make things unstable. Always get the smae speed / same manu / same latencys.

 

[razeredge]

they should work fine together, however when using memory with different speeds, it will default to the lower speed, so will be the equivalent of having 4 dimms running at 667mhz, as for overclocking, i dont have much experience overclocking memory, though afaik you can buy heatsinks for memory that might help, this link might help Memory Overclocking | Hardware Secrets

EDIT
As above, you're probably better off just selling it if you're not sure what you're doing

 

[Gamah]

It will default to that and wont like running at a 800MHZ devider..so just ebay it.

 

[Saggy]

Those would work perfectly fine together and could handle decent overclocking too - iirc 32-bit Vista can use only ~3Gb of ram effectively (you do benefit from 4Gb in some situations though).

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Saggy>> I highly doubt vista is limited to 3GB, since XP supports 4GB already.

Anyway, Case, what processor you got? Because it's quite possible that 4GB of 667 MHz ram gives better performance than 2GB of 800MHz. Especially on a Core2Duo. They seem not to profit much of higher ram clocks...

When you have 4 GB of memory in your PC, programs have direct access to 2GB of it, and the other 2 GB is extended.
If you've got XP Professional you can add the /3GB switch to boot.ini (as shown here) so that some programs specifically programmed to do so, can access 3GB directly.

 

[Mojo]

Saggy>> I highly doubt vista is limited to 3GB, since XP supports 4GB already.
.

Vista does support upto 4gig the same as XP but saggy is somewhat correct in saying effective upto 3gig (also the same as XP), the last gig is hardly gets used and when it is it's for some really geeky backend shit iirc. To deep into OS and mem functions for me to care about though so i stopped reading about it.

 

[Case]

Thanks for all the replys, I've got 32 bit vista home premium and a core2duo 6600 at 2.4ghz. Going to have a bit of a play tonight see how it goes.

Cheers guys

 

[Delket]

32 bit os can only have 4 gig total memory is the basic issue. That however includes every single little bit of writable mem in your pc. Your standard system memory gets counted last.

What that means is if you have say a 756mb gfx card, various HD's with decent cache sizes, hell even your bios mem counts + some small amount is also reserved then they all subtract from your max value so in the end your left with just over 3 gig of mem tops if you have a decent system.

 

[cHodAX]

32 bit os can only have 4 gig total memory is the basic issue. That however includes every single little bit of writable mem in your pc. Your standard system memory gets counted last.

What that means is if you have say a 756mb gfx card, various HD's with decent cache sizes, hell even your bios mem counts + some small amount is also reserved then they all subtract from your max value so in the end your left with just over 3 gig of mem tops if you have a decent system.

Back to a 2mb Cirrus Logic VGA card for me then!

 

[crispy]

You wont notice the difference on the ram speeds anyways, just keep the 4gig on 677mhz and then save em for a rainy day.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I tend to agree with the advice not to mix the memory types. I've had nothing but bad experiences with such situations.

 

[Case]

Well I put the lot in last night put the 2 800mhz in slot 1 and 2 and the 667 in slot 3 and 4. All running at 667mhz no crashes all nice and stable. Increased my system score to 5.5 from 5.1 for ram and definately sped up the computer whilst running lotro and multitasking by a load.

Thanks for all the advice guys will leave it as is with 4gig at 667

 

[Gamah]

Well I put the lot in last night put the 2 800mhz in slot 1 and 2 and the 667 in slot 3 and 4. All running at 667mhz no crashes all nice and stable. Increased my system score to 5.5 from 5.1 for ram and definately sped up the computer whilst running lotro and multitasking by a load.

Thanks for all the advice guys will leave it as is with 4gig at 667

My heart breaks hearing about 800MHZ ram running at 677

 

[Killswitch]

32 bit os can only have 4 gig total memory is the basic issue. That however includes every single little bit of writable mem in your pc. Your standard system memory gets counted last.

What that means is if you have say a 756mb gfx card, various HD's with decent cache sizes, hell even your bios mem counts + some small amount is also reserved then they all subtract from your max value so in the end your left with just over 3 gig of mem tops if you have a decent system.

Brilliant article on this here;

Ask Dan: What's with the 3Gb memory barrier?

doesn't address the speed issue, but I wouldn't expect to see much difference between 667 and 800 clocked RAM outside of synthetic benchmarks.