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    Ram Bank 1 or Ram Bank 2???

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by GLO, Sep 28, 2006.

  1. GLO

    GLO Notebook Enthusiast

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    Here is an unusual question!

    I have 2 sticks of Ram for my notebook BenQ S61.

    1 stick is 512mb of 667Mhz Corsair Value Select and the other is 1gb 533Mhz RamBo ram.

    What is the best configuration to use???
    667Mhz 512Mb stick in bank 1 or
    533mhz 1024Mb stick in bank 1???

    Thanks
     
  2. usapatriot

    usapatriot Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Doesnt matter, the 667mhz stick will clock down to 533mhz anyways.

    No difference.
     
  3. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    Makes no difference. All the ram will run at the speed of the slowest stick.
     
  4. hydra

    hydra Breaks Laptops

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    ...and if your notebook is as mine, you won't feel any difference between running both at 667 or both at 533Mhz. Try it if you get the chance ;)
     
  5. GLO

    GLO Notebook Enthusiast

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    thanks, i realised that it will drop to the slowest speed stick, but is there any benefit in having the 1gb stick in bank 1? or does it make no difference.
     
  6. usapatriot

    usapatriot Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    it makes no difference.
     
  7. acruxksa

    acruxksa Notebook Consultant

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    The question should be: will I lose dual channel with two different sized sticks of memory? Answer: YES.

    Here's some test that can illustrate the problem. It's not the same motherboard, chipset or cpu, but the ram is the same. Look at the performance of DDR2 @ 667 and 533 Mhz on the Nforce4 SLI board (the only one with both dual and single channel tests). Notice that there is no difference between dual channel 667Mhz DDR2 and Dual Channel 533Mhz DDR2, but also notice the large difference between the two speeds when running single channel.
    http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/mainboard/p4-ddr667-roundup-may2k5.html

    There is another review out there somewhere (couldn't find it) that uses conroe cpu's to show nearly the same thing. If I run across it I will post the link.

    Despite the benchmarks showing the performance hit, in the real world you would likely not notice too much difference.