Can I use 2X1GB sticks in 2 slots and 2X512's in the other 2? Or do I have
to use all 4 of the same size sticks? Also, does it really matter if all the
sticks are same brand or make? Or can they be different brands as long as
they are all the same speed? Probably going to get a board with the Nforce4
chipset. Thanks for any help.
Gord.
For an Intel chipset, they provide memory guide documents.
The diagrams in this one are a bit messed up.
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/applnots/302344.htm
On an Intel chipset, you can use 2x1GB plus 2x512MB. You can
use just about any combination of DIMMs you can think of
(the motherboard can run in single channel mode, if each DIMM
happened to be different enough). Using a couple of matched pairs
should give you at least dual channel mode, on an Intel chipset
board.
In this case, we are fortunate to have a document on the Nvidia
site, to explain how their Intel processor compatible chipset
works. The Nvidia chipset seems to be just as good.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20041015640094.html (tech briefs)
"Technical Brief: NVIDIA DualDDR2 Memory Architecture"
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_20231.html
Basically, 2x1GB plus 2x512MB DDR2 will run in dual channel
mode on the Nvidia chipset, but with the address interleaving
function modified. I would not expect performance to be
affected that much by the loss of fine-grained interleaving.
Dual channel operation is the more important mode, and you'll
get that.
When it comes to matching, the rows/columns/banks/ranks of a
DIMM are all that should be used to determine matching. But some
of the Asus BIOSes check things that should not matter, so for
best results I would try to use the same brands for the matched
pairs. There might be fewer surprises if using the same brands
of memory. Some of the Asus AMD Athlon64 BIOSes have been
annoying about the matching issue, so it depends on what idiot
writes the BIOS
And we don't know if Award/AMI is responsible
for some of these BIOS modules, or an Asus staff member is
involved. There are many contributors to the design of the
BIOS, so it is hard to place blame on any one party (even the
chipset manufacturer or the processor manufacturer can have a
hand in the BIOS design, as the BIOS consists of a bunch of
individual code modules).
Paul
