P4: Mixing memory modules of different brands?

[XBTC]

Hi!

I have been running a P4 [email protected] with a vcore of 1.65V for a year now. At the time I bought the best of the best: A Corsair 256MB DDR3500 Dimm. Now I want to upgrade the amount of memory I have. Today I can easily get a different brand 512MB DDR3500 Dimm for the price of one Corsair 256MB DD3500 Dim.
I wonder if mixing different brand memory modules makes problems with a 845PE chipset. My Albatron board is able to run 250+MHZ memory clock. Will I still be able to run at 3500 speeds with mixed modules and if not how big will the decrease in speed be?

Thanks in advance,
XBTC!

P.s.: I know that my P4 1.8 doesnt reach 250+MHZ memory clock anyway, but I want to be able to upgrade to a better cpu later.

 

[jazztrumpet216]

Right now, there will be no performance hit since your CPU can't hit 250MHz FSB, as you said. Down the road, it will depend on which stick has a lower maximum speed ceiling on it. One stick might be able to do 275MHz, while the other might be stuck at 255. In that case, the performance hit is 20MHz FSB. There isn't much of a way to tell until you get one and try it out though.

Others can give you a better picture of which brands are good OCing brands, I haven't been keeping up on the ram picture lately.

 

[XBTC]

Thanks for your answer, but I think you did understand my question wrong. Surely you cannot tell what overclocked speeds a certain memory module achieves. I just want to know if two different brand(and size) DDR3500 sticks will run at their rated speed of DDR3500 together or if they will not run stable at their rated speed if they are from different companies.

 

[jazztrumpet216]

Yeah, they should be able to run at PC3500 together. They might not however, be able to run at the same timings. You'll want to make sure that the new stick you buy will be rated the same as your old one.

 

[XBTC]

Thanks for your answer. Are there any people with other opinions or hands-on expirience here?

 

[theELVISCERATOR]

Mix?

I have built quite a few systems and i would avoid mixing ram if at all possible, I wouldnt even mix sizes of same type if I could avoid it. Ram all same=stable system.

 

[billstuck]

Thanks for your answer. Are there any people with other opinions or hands-on expirience here?

I mixed 2 sticks of HyperX 3500 and 2 sticks of Buffalo 3700 and it ran fine however I couldn't run the memory to spec'ed speed, but that could be partially because of the matching and partially because I have all 4 dimms full on my board and Overclocking with 4 sticks of RAM is harder then 2.

I eventually sold the 3500 and got 2 more 3700 and was able to push things further with tighter timings.

 

[alien76]

I wouldnt suggest you to run two different RAM sticks. I only used different RAM in old Celeron system and it became really unstable, when other ram was installed.