memory compatability

So I bought a stick of DDRAM500 from a fellow forum-goer a few days ago and I'll be recieving it in a few days. At the time, I assumed it was compatable with my system, but just to be sure, I checked in my motherboard's User Guide. There was nothing there on 500 ram, it only seemed to go up to 400. Wanting to get to the bottom of this, I e-mail Asus customer support asking if this RAM would be compatable and get the following reply

Dear Friend :
Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.
My name is Leon and I would be assisting you today.


Well, please use the memory on the list which we 've tested before .for the DDR 500, there maybe some incompatible problem ,and if you do not have to ,please use the memory stick on our list.

if having any problems, please don't hesitate to let me know. Let's discuss this issue together.
Thank you for using ASUS products and services!

ASUS Customer Service Center (Shanghai , China)
If you have any suggestion or complaints about our tech support service, please send your valuable info to [email protected] , we arrange specilists to handle relative issue, your suggestion may give us more elicitation to serve our customers much better.

Web: http://www.asus.com.tw
Download: http://download.asus.com.tw
FTP: ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw

great. somehow this guy managed to confuse me more.

Problem one with this reply: there is no "list" I can see which I can refer to! Neither on their website nor in my users guide.

Problem Two: His answer was so passive and indecisive-sounding that I honestly have no idea if this guy actually knows what he's talking about or is simply sprouting information quoted to him when they hired this guy off the streets! ARGH!

So, my question is (and please, PLEASE try and give a simple yes or no answer): is this RAM compatable with my computer or will it screw something up?

System specs are in my sig and RAM specs are here.

Oh, and yes, I already know putting two ram sticks with different timings will force the higher one to work at the level of the slowest stick.

DDR ram is not JEDEC certified past DDR400. That's why you don't see manufacturer's talking about support for higher than DDR400, there is no official spec yet past DDR400.

it should work no problem on your system. Whether you get to utilize the full power of it (250FSB) is up to your CPU and motherboard.

thanks man, that's exactly the answer i was looking for

oh sorry, one final question- will I have to manually change my RAM timings to a lower setting when I install the new stick, or will it automatically downgrade itself?

more than likely you're gonna have to change the timings manually.. spd doesn't always get the right default timings on my board. You should probably start with relaxed timings anyway and work your way to the lowest timings you can get.

ok thanks man- shoulden't be too hard to change the timings in the BIOS i think....

Along the same lines I bought 2X512 mb DDR 3200 for myself and thought I'd swap out the 2X256 3200 I had and put it in a system for my inlaws. I bought the motherboard (ASUS A7N8X-VM/400) last night and today I was double checking that the new memory would work in my system (ASUS A7N8X Deluxe). Mine it should no problem but the other mobo only takes 2700/2100 RAM. I just looked at 400 in the name and thought thats what it stood for. So the 3200 will work but at lower settings right? What do I fiddle with in the BIOS? I shouldn't let it autodetect? This is my first complete build by the way.