Short Term Ram Upgrade Before Long Term Transition

Respital

Respital

Active Member
I'm still running with the original build I made way back in 2007 (see signature) and I'm overdue for a RAM upgrade. I'm playing Dota 2 with 2GB of ram and the minimum is 4GB haha. I'm thinking about either of the two sets in the link below, maybe going with the heat spreader since i'll try to transition this computer into something different later (maybe a file server/media PC).

I'm a little worried upgrading the system since it's so old and likely all of the programming (BIOS, etc.) is original. I'd appreciate knowing if there's the possibility of conflict with my current RAM, would really suck to install an extra 4GB only to leave the 2 currently in as unusable.

Link: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...S&percm=20-231-122:$$$$$$$;20-231-207:$$$$$$$

Forgot to mention since I included it in the title, long term transition is going to be Skylake and DDR4 which i'm pretty excited for.
 
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You could always upgrade the BIOS if you were worried about it. Depending on the release notes it might have stability or performance tweaks too.

As long as the replacement modules support the same speed, timings and voltage as the existing sticks then they should theoretically play okay together. You may have to manually set a few parameters if the JEDEC tables are different between modules.
 
beers said:
You could always upgrade the BIOS if you were worried about it. Depending on the release notes it might have stability or performance tweaks too.

As long as the replacement modules support the same speed, timings and voltage as the existing sticks then they should theoretically play okay together. You may have to manually set a few parameters if the JEDEC tables are different between modules.
Click to expand...

Just pulled this from Speccy:
CAS# Latency (CL) 5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 5 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 5 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) 18 clocks
Command Rate (CR) 2T

Looks like what I have now has a cycle time of 18 compared to 15 for the GSkill RAM. Would the motherboard simply slow down the GSkill cycle time to match my older sticks?
 
Respital said:
Just pulled this from Speccy:
CAS# Latency (CL) 5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 5 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 5 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) 18 clocks
Command Rate (CR) 2T

Looks like what I have now has a cycle time of 18 compared to 15 for the GSkill RAM. Would the motherboard simply slow down the GSkill cycle time to match my older sticks?
Click to expand...

Generally motherboards do a pretty good job of defaulting to a speed that works for all your RAM installed. You might need to tweak it a bit to get the speeds working right but most of the time RAM plays nice with each other.
 
Darren said:
Generally motherboards do a pretty good job of defaulting to a speed that works for all your RAM installed. You might need to tweak it a bit to get the speeds working right but most of the time RAM plays nice with each other.
Click to expand...

Could you see any problem with the 2x2GB and the 2x1GB working together?
 
Respital said:
Could you see any problem with the 2x2GB and the 2x1GB working together?
Click to expand...

Not strictly from a capacity perspective. You'd want to make sure you had 3 GB in each channel though for the most consistent RAM performance.
 
beers said:
You'd want to make sure you had 3 GB in each channel though for the most consistent RAM performance.
Click to expand...

Channels are represented by the different coloured RAM slots right? Wouldn't I want to match the channels to the kit that the RAM belongs to so that they can work in dual channel mode?
 
Respital said:
Channels are represented by the different coloured RAM slots right? Wouldn't I want to match the channels to the kit that the RAM belongs to so that they can work in dual channel mode?
Click to expand...

Channeling is a function of the memory controller, not the RAM. Basically you have two 64-bit buses. Ideally you would want a similar capacity in each channel as you would not have to rely on a single 64-bit bus to pull a lopsided majority of your data from.
 
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