Will RAM downgrade?

I have a Inspiron 1501. The 2gb dual channel set is $10 cheaper and it's DDR2 667 (PC2 5300). Will it automatically downgrade to DDR2 533 (PC2 4200)? I think my laptop only supports 533. Can someone please help me?

 

yeah don't worry, the speed of memory is always the maximum speed it can run at, 667mhz ram usually works in 533mhz mode. plus and added benefit is that you have more "valuable" memory"... hehe, bottom line, go for it dont worry about it...

 

hmmm thats not always the case though, some laptops just wont run with RAM that is rated higher than their supported speeds. this happened with my dads acer, it only supported DDR 333 and when i put a DDR 400 stick in it, it didnt work.

check around maybe ask in the dell forums, they would know better

 

Actually I would disagree. Yes, the RAM will downclock. However that 667MHz ram probably has CL = 5, meaning it would be better to get 533MHz RAM with a CL = 4. Personally, to me, 533MHz RAM with CL = 4 would be more valuable. If you go to a place like newegg, look at say PC2 4200, and then look at the price differences going to lower latencies. Lower latencies are better, meaning it is more expensive. If I were you, I would buy PC2 4200 RAM with CL =4.

Something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231118

Plus if you look in the reviews, lots of people have used it in the E1501.

 

If you had 667 with a CL5, chances are once you lower the clocks you can run it CL4.

98% of the time if you go buy 2 diffrent sets of ram from the same brand binned at diffrent speeds. Its the same IC's. They just have diffrent stock clocks and latency settings.

Higher speeds = looser latency to keep it stable.

Plus CL 5/4 is no big deal, outside of a benchmark you will not see the diffrence.

As for the Acer, no reason the ram wouldnt lower its speed down to match the speed bios tells it to run. It was just imcompabible with the ram not the speed. How knows maybe it has registered ram or somthing crazy in it.

 

What kind of processor do you have? The AMD Turion X2 processors fully support 667MHz RAM.

There is virtually no performance difference between 533 and 667MHz RAM, and therefore no reason to pay more for one over the other.

 

Vicious no it had normal non-regged RAM in it and it wasnt incompatible, I asked in the forum and it appears it would only run that speed no more no less. This happens sometimes on some models.

 

You have to understand how ram works, its just a piece of hardware, its your computer that makes it run a certian speed.

Unlike say a hard drive where one runs 5400rpm and another 7200rpm, ram is a blank slate its not built to run at one speed, its a medium that your computer chooses what speed it runs at.

There is no diffrence between say my old Mushkin DDR400 and my DDR500 sticks that I had. They used exactly the same parts. Only diffrence is the speed settings for the DDR500 say to the bios on your computer "hey I can run as fast as 500mhz (250x2) with these latency settings x, x, x, x ect" while the DDR400 ram said the same but with a diffrent file to say what speed it can run at. Besides that file to tell the computer how fast it can run. The hardware is the same.

This is a extremely common thing among ram. They take the best chips like DDR2 is very popular with the D9 Micron chips. Test a batch full of them. Those wich pass the highest speeds get labeled as fast ram, those that fail get labeled as a lower speed ram. Again exactly the same ram, but not all of them can always run the faster speed and be stable. All of them however can run the slower speed. You notice the trend is the higher the speed the more "loose" the latency timings are. say 2-2-2-5 for DDR400 while the DDR500 version is 3-3-3-8 80% of the time or higher you can go into bios and change the latency and clocks of the cheap ram and it will run with the same settings as the higher end ram. Thats because just due to being labled DDR 400 doesnt mean it didnt pass the test for DDR500. There is alot of UCC ram out there or "untested" its cheaper for companies to do this and more efficant. They usually only handpick some for there top end stuff and the rest just gets assigned a speed and goes to the shelves.

So the ONLY thing that makes sense in what your saying is they programed the bios on that computer to only accept ram that runs with a stock speed of XXX mhz, even if a higher speed ram is exactly the same but has been tested and labeled to run at higher clocks.

That makes absolutly no sense at all, and there is not one good reason to do that.

So dont think of faster ram as being slowed down to run at a lower setting, its just running a diffrent setting and usually cost more

Almost all of us computer guys buy the cheaper lower clocked ram and just overclock it ourselves since we know its the same as the expensive stuff. We just do our research and make sure its the same IC's. Once in a blue moon you find that between two diffrent speeds on a ram they actually start to use diffrent IC's because they are of a higher/lower quality.

This is more likely what happened to you and some mobo's are very picky about what IC's they will run and you ran into a issue.

Even now the brand new Asus G1S model is having issue taking chaper ICs like Kingston uses. It would be easy to fool sombody with misinformation and say its because it was not the right speed, when it was really about the quality or type of ram and nothing to do with the speed at all.

So take this information to heart, maybe you can dig up the matter again and find out the truth in it, or find out why a company would make a bios to only take a ram binned at a certian speed.

 

This in enlightening. I ASSUMED since the insprion came with 512x2 533, that it had to be 533. Thanks!