titus12 said:
I have a P4 630 CPU-3.0 processer with a 800FSB. My motherboard is an Asus
P5GD2-X that supports momory 600/533/400MHz DDR2. I have this program
CPU-Z. It tells me info. about the memory in my system. In the timings
table there are three tables under two of the memory sticks and one table
under one memory stick.
2GB-PC2-6400 - 3 tables
1GB-PC2-4300 - 1 table
512MB-PC2- 5300 - 3 tables.
Should I replace the memory sticks to work better? What is the general rule
in buying the right memory for your motherboard?
Thank you;
David
Your memory setup is currently limited by the PC2-4300 stick. Dividing
by 8, that is a limit of DDR2-533.
The motherboard supports DDR2-533 and DDR2-600 settings, but the percentage improvement
would be virtually invisible in day to day usage. To test that theory, remove
the 1GB stick, and try the BIOS setting for memory, that allows setting
DDR2-600. Then test the results with a benchmark. I like SuperPI for a
test of the practical difference. A 3GHz P4 processor should be able to
do 1 million digits of PI calculation, in 45 to 50 seconds. A lower
time is better.
http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/
http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/super_pi_mod-1.5.zip
According to the manual, you get the benefit of dual channel operation,
if the total memory in each channel is an equal quantity. The manual says
DIMM_A1 + DIMM_B1 = DIMM_A2 + DIMM_B2
With a mixture of a 512MB stick, a 1GB stick, and a 2GB stick, it
isn't possible to make the channels contain equal quantities of
memory. You could use two 1GB sticks, for example, and place the
2GB stick in the other channel. Then the above equation would look
like:
1GB + 1GB = 2GB + (0) [ A total of 4GB of memory, minus bus addressing ]
[ Perhaps 3.2GB or so would be reported by Windows. ]
With your currently available RAM, it isn't possible to test a dual
channel configuration, so it is hard to say whether the difference
would be important or not. So changing the 512MB stick, to a 1GB
stick, is the best improvement I can see there.
Paul
