ram

i currently have two 1gb ddr2 ram cards in my pc, i few months ago i bought a 2gb ddr2 ram card when i plugged it in and turned on my pc it was real slow compared to normal according to my BIOS i had 3gb ram though so i did recive a 1gb increase of ram.

so im gussing my question has three parts
1)do both ram cards have to work at the same speed in this case my new card was 667Mhz PC2-5300... not sure what the 1gb one is though

2) i was reading somewhere many years ago that when there are two ram slots both cards have to have identical mb (gb ram was not around at the time) so in this case would both cards have to be 2gb (4gb in total rather than the 3gb i was trying to run it at) or has this method outdated

3) if its neither of these does anyone know what the problem may be?

 

Quick question, by ram cards do you mean something like this?

http://www.foxtec.com/images/products/dimm.jpg

1) Not necessarily. However, mixed ram will run at the speed of the slowest stick by default.

2) If you run 2 identical sticks in the same channel, you're doubling the bandwidth. Also known as dual channel. It's faster than single channel.

3) What exactly is the problem? You're seeing 2 gigs instead of 3 in bios?

Find here or at google "pc wizard" & post your specs.

 

yes that is what i mean by RAM card

1) that cant be the problem then as it causes a decrease in my pcs prformance and the 2gb ram card is the best type my motherboard can take

2)currently they are identical but i dont think that is the problem as it is a major difference

3) no when i had the 2gb stick in my bios stated there was 3gb ram.
the problem is that with the 2gb stick of ram my pc becomes slow and laggy, when i took it out and replaced it with another 1gb stick the pc ran fast and stable several. also on occassions my pc simply turned off without any warnings (with 3gb)

as for a report http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=149432&page=2 i have an everest report about half down (.txt) this file that states all my pcs specs.

 

Hmm couldn't find the report there so another would help. Akhilles is spot on that all RAM will slow to the "speed" of your slowest RAM module there are also other issues here and that is the SPD (Serial Presence Detector Chip) of the different RAM modules, basically it instructs the RAM at what "speeds" and "timings" they should run at. This can cause mis-communication as well speed variation due to the settings of differing RAM modules but can be overcome!

In EVEREST if we expand Motherboard and then click on SPD we will get all the info on our different RAM modules and possibly differing settings for different speeds (MHz).

Can you please post the SPD details here as we may have to go into BIOS and manually set these to resolve your issue.

As far as the 3Gb I assume you have a 32Bit OS (standard Windows) and if so I'm afraid you will only ever see lowish 3Gb at best:

Before you buy 4Gb: Things you need to know

 

FYI, cpuz can show the current memory config. Take a screenshot & post here.