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2GB to 6GB on a Asus P5B?


Toxicsoul

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Hi,

 

I have a Asus P5B MB equipped with a set of TWIN2X2048-6400C4. Can I upgrade to 6GB of ram by equipping the two remaining slots with twin 2GB sticks and in that case what model do you recommend?

 

Also, is it better to run at CL4 667MHz or CL5 800Mhz?

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So basically if I want to upgrade my memory, and I will have to eventually, I have to go with the same kind I have making it 4GB (1GBx4) or sell the ones I have and get dual 2GB sticks. Also I get the impression from posts on this forum that 8GB would make my system slow for some reason, because I use four slots instead of two, making the two extra slots completely useless. Is this correct?

 

What about my other question, what is theoretically faster low latency or high Mhz?

 

(I have Vista Ultimate 64-bit so I could theoretically have 128 GB of RAM.)

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Best would be to replace what you have now for memory that is exactly matched 2-2.0 Gig modules would giver better performance then 4 1 Gig modules. But I would suggest getting the memory you plan on using and not try upgrading as it can be hit and miss.
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So basically if I want to upgrade my memory, and I will have to eventually, I have to go with the same kind I have making it 4GB (1GBx4) or sell the ones I have and get dual 2GB sticks. Also I get the impression from posts on this forum that 8GB would make my system slow for some reason, because I use four slots instead of two, making the two extra slots completely useless. Is this correct?

 

The slots are not completely useless when you populate all four slots. You just can not run as fast. The on motherboard memory controller can not access and load the DRAM as fast as two banks populated when all four banks are populated. If you are using software that makes use of greater than 2GB of DRAM, then greater than 2GB of DRAM will still be phenomenally faster than a system with 2GB needing to swap out. Keep in mind that your Core 2 with a 1066MHz FSB runs at 1:1 with DDR2 533Mhz DRAM. So your 800Mhz DRAM when dropped to 667Mhz (to maintain stability with the on motherboard memory controller) is still running faster than the processor.

 

I would sell the sticks and move to 2GB sticks. You will find far less possible issues with this move.

What about my other question, what is theoretically faster low latency or high Mhz?

 

Theoretically and given the exact parameters of system, software, you will have a point of intersection between timings and bandwidth. 800Mhz with 4-4-4-10 and 1000Mhz with 5-5-5-15 are basically very close in benchmarks. In the real world? Let me give you an example. Hold a 3 kilo grapefruit in one hand and a 3.2 kilo grapefruit in the other hand. Move them around and try to see if you can tell the difference. There is a saturation point between canned artificial benchmarks and reality. Between SuperPi and loading a game with a digital stopwatch. For a different explanation, the data bus of the system is nowhere near saturated and so much of the data bus is empty on transferral. So, yes, the speed increases but much of the theoretical transfer data is never there to be transferred in reality. In theory, all the bus lanes are full of data. :D:

 

(I have Vista Ultimate 64-bit so I could theoretically have 128 GB of RAM.)

With VISTA Ultimate, you have 16TB of address space, 512TB of paging file space, both 128GB for paged pool and non-paged pool addressing, and 1TB of system cache. You can theoretically install greater than 128GB in a Windows VISTA Ultimate/Enterprise system.

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