? for Computer genuises

[GatorB]

OK say I have a motherboard with 4 slots for RAM. Now say I want to put in 1 GB of RAM. Does it matter if I use four 256MB sticks or one 1 GB stick as far as speed or performance?

[potter]

doesn't matter bra

[xtrasyn]

It does but it depends on your mobo and the mem channels.

64 bits boards would like 2x512 better than 1x1gb.

[GatorB]

Originally Posted by xtrasyn

It does but it depends on your mobo and the mem channels.

64 bits boards would like 2x512 better than 1x1gb.

Well it's just regular 32 bit board. I know my system rather have either 2 or 4 sticks. I've 3 in there before but it said it didn't like it in a manner of speaking.

[xtrasyn]

In that case Potter is absofuckinglutely right. And it has to do with the speed, if you have let's say 2x speed1 and one speed2 it will default to the lowest speed and notify you.


Now cram it, you mak me look nerdy. ;)

[Pinklinkz]

if you're gonna use 4 sticks then try and get matching dual channel sticks, that way will be a lot faster than 1 plain gig stick

[GatorB]

Originally Posted by Pinklinkz

if you're gonna use 4 sticks then try and get matching dual channel sticks, that way will be a lot faster than 1 plain gig stick

Not sure I can. My board supports PC3200 184 PIN it's just a 478 socket

[Choppa]

You really need to tell us the motherboard model as to what variables are best, what its front side bus is etc ie some people try to put in 1Gb sticks into a memory channel that can only take a max 512 mb stick of ram and therefore the 1Gig will only run at the max memory channel speed.

FSB, Latency, Dram Timing Etc are all pertinent information which can be found if you give us your MOBO model

give us some more info

[Tom_PM]

I got a single 1gig from newegg. Works fine for me. Didnt want to seat properly at first, so I had to pull it and reseat it once or twice. Been ok for the past year or so.

Didnt care much about minutiae because it's just a machine to browse, do some photoshop once in a while, crap like that.

[GatorB]

Originally Posted by choppa

You really need to tell us the motherboard model as to what variables are best, what its front side bus is etc ie some people try to put in 1Gb sticks into a memory channel that can only take a max 512 mb stick of ram and therefore the 1Gig will only run at the max memory channel speed.

FSB, Latency, Dram Timing Etc are all pertinent information which can be found if you give us your MOBO model

give us some more info

I thought my question was pretty simple. I don't why all that is necessary. Assuming all the sticks are the same( ie PC3200 ) and the latency and other factors are the same, either one stick of 1 Gb RAM, two sticks of 512MB or 4 stick of 256MB all perform the same or not.

Just currious because not being an expert I was wondering if say my computer is using 800 MB of memory it seems it be more efficient for it to get all that RAM from one stick than have to get it from 4. I could be off base, which is why I was asking.

[Tom_PM]

I think your machine is similar to mine. It's not a high end cutting edge gaming machine with 18 processors and 42 graphics cards, so just do what's more convenient for you.

The ram is parallel, so 1, 2 or 4 wont mean much in real world terms at all. Reason I got a single one was just because it meant 1 thing to buy, 1 thing to ship, 1 thing to install, and only 1 thing to potentially have problems with.

[polle54]

Well it's not a big deal

2*512 might be a bit faster than one 1024 block

but be careful that the blocks you have in the machine is the same kind and type. different kind of rams can work against each other.