ram question

[rduck]

Ok, i have a celeron 433 with 3 66 mhz dimms (64,64,32), i want to buy a piii 500. i can afford some 100mhz ram, but my question is, can i use any of my 66 mhz ram with the piii and the 100 mhz ram or does it all have to be 100mhz??

[CHHAS]

it depends on the quality of your RAM, I've had a PC66 module that would run at 112 MHz, but you'll have to try

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P3 500@560, 192 MB ram, G400 16SH

[rduck]

i dont want to have to over clock anything

i intend to buy a 100 mhz 128 mb dimm but i want to know whether or not i can just slap in any of my 66 mhz leftovers without any extra hassel?

[Jammrock]

Once again, it depends on the quality of RAM you currently own. If you have some good Micron PC66 DIMMs, I wouldn't worry. If you got some bargin basement cheap-o stuff, test it out and see what it will do.

Jammrock

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PIII 450@504, 256 MB RAM, 35 GB total w/ WD Experts, Abit UDMA 66 controller, CL 6x DVD, PLEXTOR 8x4x32 ATAPI CD-RW (my newest toy), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, LinkSys Etherfast 10/100, DSI 56k modem, Addtronics 6896A Case w/ a crap load of fans and Dynmat noise dampening, MAG DX715T monitor.

Hi, my name is Jammrock. I'm a computer phreak and an EverCrack addict.

[Thundrchez]

If you don't want to overclock any of your ram, you can't use your 66MHz dimms on a 100MHz FSB. You could have had 100MHz dimms running OK but slower than rated on your celery.

It is very possible that your SDRAM is capable of running at 100MHz FSB, but you'll never know for sure unless you try it.

One thing that they don't tell you is that your memory throughput takes a 10% performance hit when you mix and match ram sizes. I'd bet that you would get better performance right now if you rip out that 32MB dimm out of your celery system.

[labrador]

I'll second that for just trying it.

I upgraded a machine from 266 to 400Mhz and was faced with the same question. I have 70MB of 10ns memory, just generic SD-RAM that was sold before we heard of PC100 (brands were Hitachi and TI RAM chips). The old memory works fine in my case.

Try it, and if you have problems, go shopping for PC100 RAM. In your specific case, if you have problems you can test one DIMM at a time to see if any of them are usable at 100MHZ.