if you have a stick of DDR333 and DDR400...

[j0b0sapi3n]

what happens if you have 1 stick of ddr333 and one stick of ddr400, at which speed do the memory run at, 333 or 400, or do they both run at individual speeds?:shoot3:

[Wiggo]

It will be restricted to the speed of the slowest stick. ;)

[E^vol]

so they would both work ? but at the slower of the 2 speeds ? is that what you're saying ? i thought that you had to have the same type/speed ram for them to work ?!?

[Wiggo]

Yep that's what I mean though some motherboards can have probs with mixed memory a lot won't and some ppl suggest puttin' the faster stick in the 1st slot with the slower one after but this is more likely to cause probs as the mobo may apply the speed settings of the first to the second so stick the slower one in the first slot to overcome this prob. The best results though are got with matched sticks though. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Darthtanion]

Hmm... Seems to me that if you have a workable BIOS, then you should be able to manually designate the speed of the memory. Common sense would say that you would only have this type of problem if you allowed the system to automatically read the modules being used and set the speeds accordingly. I don't know about you, but I always prefer to set these levels of performance myself. :)

[Wiggo]

I do too but it still falls to the slower memory dictating the speed that you can safely run at.
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Darthtanion]

Very true, but I was referring to the problems you were talking about. Shouldn't be too difficult to manually set up memory speeds in BIOS to take care of this problem... unless the real problem lies with the communication with the chipset?

[bigjackusa]

It would seem to me that the easiest solution would be to install only the slower stick, set the bios to "by SPD", and write down the settings. Then install the second stick (leaving the first one in as well), and see if any of the settings change from what you have written down. If any have, reset them to the original values. The faster ram should work at any less agressive settings dictated by by the slower stick. It is possible that some settings of the ram certified for the slower FSB are more aggressive that the ones for the ram certified for the faster FSB. To be completely sure, you would have to perform the single stick installation on each stick, select the least agressive setting from each list, and manually enter those settings in the bios.