blarue09 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 I have a i945p-A7 Mainboard which currently has Transcend Information (the brand of RAM) 2X 512Mb ddr2 pc2-4300 (266MHz) running in dual channel. I just bought TWIN2X2048-5400C4 ram to put in my computer. I am wondering if I am able to run these two corsair XMS2s in the 2 empty slots i have left and run them in dual channel as well. so the plan is to have 3GB RAM total by having 2 512 in one dual channel and 2 1GB in the other dual channel. will this work? i read that you have to pair dual channel ram together with the same specs and everything, but what about when you have 2 sets of dual channel? do all 4 slots need to be the exact same brand/type/frequency or RAM? also, one 512 Mb is in slot #1, and the other is in slot #3 (both blue in colour) i have yet to install the corsair XMS2 RAM but i am assuming for the XMS2's to be in dual channel, they will need to be in slots 2 and 4.. is this correct? I hope i am supplying sufficient information for you to help me on this. my MB says it: -supports dual channel DDR2 up to 8 banks -supports DDR2 533 (266MHz) / 667 (333MHz) for a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 10.7 GB/s -supports 256Mb, 512Mb, or 1G-Mb DDR technologies for x8 and x16 devices -supports non-ECC DIMMs -Maximum DRAM space is up to 4GB thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 It's NEVER recommended to mix memory from different manufacturers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 25, 2008 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 25, 2008 I would agree, but you would get best performance just using two modules that match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blarue09 Posted January 25, 2008 Author Share Posted January 25, 2008 ok, so i should only use the xms2 pair of 1GB that i have and take out the 2 512MB to get the best performance right? should i be using them in dual channel? i am a little confused as to the difference of using them in dual channel or single. a friend told me that with dual you get faster running ram but it will only recognize the ram as 1GB instead of adding them together as 2GB. what is the best way to use the pair of xms2 that i have to get the maximum performance? also, should i be adjusting any voltage or timing on them? and my last question is regarding the metal covers on the ram. do you need special cooling directed on the RAM, i would assume they get hot in there. thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 25, 2008 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 25, 2008 Just install the modules so they are in dual channel and then load setup defaults and set the required settings Voltage and timings for the specific modules you have, or if you have Value Select just load setup defaults. And Two 1.0 Gog modules will show 2.0 Gig of memory in your system and it does not matter if they are dual channel or not but Dual channel will have better performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blarue09 Posted January 26, 2008 Author Share Posted January 26, 2008 i seem to have run into a problem. after installing the ram in dual channel, it registered on CPU-Z as 5-5-5-15 @ 1.8V i went into the BIOS and changed to this: CL: 4 tRCD:4 tRP: 4 tRAS: 12 RAM voltage: 1.9V RAM frequency to 667MHz just as the tested specs said to do. when i checked out cpu-z it said 4-4-4-16 instead of the 4-4-4-12 i had set in the Phoenix BIOS. what went wrong? also, how do you change the command rate in the BIOS? im not sure what it is currently set at. and what should my SLP_S4# assertion width be? it is currently set at 4 to 5 sec I also saw there are settings you can use for the latency and everything in memtest, however they do not seem to save changes i make. -if someone could please take the time to address these questions it would be greatly appreciated. thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blarue09 Posted January 28, 2008 Author Share Posted January 28, 2008 before you guys get back to me on this topic i thought id add that I ran memtest and on the default 5-5-5-15 the ram railed 3 times while running the tests for about 45min ~7 tests or so. I then switched it in the bios to 4-4-4-12 (which really shows up as 4-4-4-16 in CPU-Z) and it passed in memtest with the same time frame and amount of tests if not more. the bios shows the ram settings that i set as 4-4-4-12 currently but cpu-z says 4-4-4-16 still (i attached the screenshot proof in my last post). any idea on why there's this discrepancy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blarue09 Posted January 29, 2008 Author Share Posted January 29, 2008 has anyone had this problem before? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 29, 2008 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 29, 2008 Probably just CPU miss reading the timings as long as its stable I would not worry about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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