What if...

What if i had 2 memory stick on my rig.. and one was PC2800 and the other one was PC3200.... Would it blow up or something?

 

Due to the frequency difference, it would start a chain reaction in your memory subsystems, which would cause a massive surge, powerfull enough to create a gravitational field so powerful that it would create a rip in matter of space as we know it. a void will form and the world will be consumed, then the universe.
You will kill us all!
Or it'll just run at the slowest of the speeds between the sticks your using, all depends on the mobo

 

Install the slower memory in the FIRST memory bank, usually called
bank 0

ha!
for a minute iamien, I thought you were serious!

 

Hmm, ive had the 2 sticks in my mobo for a while now... but im thinking of switching the 3200 with a a stick of 512 PC2700, just to hope itll run faster

 

If you want faster, two sticks of pc3200, you probably wont notice the differance eitherway.

 

well it depends on the mobo, doesnt it? my mobo is 1.7ghz

 

I doubt yer mobo is 1.7, u prob mean ur CPU, BUT if u put 2x sticks in and the one is slower > they both will run at the slower speed.

 

unless your motherboard has independant RAM controller chips (I've never seen a consumer board with this... in fact the only system I've ever seen that does that was a rendering server for a big company, which had a whopping 30 memory slot banks!!) then the bus will run using the slowest speed.

If you tried to run them both at the maximum speed then the lower rated module would fail.

Its a system bottleneck, running a slow module with a fast one, meaning the slower stick will impede the potential performance of the faster one. It's best to get matching sticks, preferabley matched by the manufacturer (that way they should be near identical in every way - not just speed)

 

Yeah, it does. Actually, it depends on the speed of your front-side bus (FSB), not the clock speed of your CPU. What does the FSB run at?

If it's 333MHz or slower, I don't think it'll make the slightest difference whether you use PC2700 or PC3200. You won't be running the PC3200 memory at its maximum speed.

 

Unless youre overclocking, of course Its better to use higher rated memory when overclocking, as it reduces component strain, and memory isnt the most overclockable component by far. If you remove that barrier of the memory rating, the only strain will be on the chipset and CPU, which are (probably) more overclockable than the memory.

If you're running stock, there would be no point in higher rated RAM chips.

 

How do i check?

 

You check your FSB by going into BIOS, or using a program like CPU-Z

 

FSB = 99.7MHz
Bus Speed = 398.7MHz