h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just a quick question, I currently have 4 DDR ram slots on my motherboard, with two sticks of 512Mb ram in them, if I want to upgrade this can I get two sticks of 1Gb ram for the remaining slots or would they have to be the same as the 512Mb already there?

You have to keep all the items in grouped RAM slots at the same value. Assuming your slots are compatible with the higher value at all, you could upgrade now or decide not to bother and perhaps have moved onto a new computer by the time your RAM usage exceeds 4 of the lower value ones.

So basically my options are either to upgrade with two more sticks of 512Mb, or upgrade with two sticks of 1Gb leaving two slots open for future upgrades yes?

I take it I can't have one grouped pair of 512mb and one grouped pair of 1Gb?

My motherboard is this one; www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/112169

Cheers for your help...

If the slots are already grouped together on the motherboard, then that's the group they are. I don't suppose you are proposing to chop up your motherboard, rebuild it and rewrite the BIOS etc.

No,that would be a little out of my capabilities. All I want to know is whether I can put 1Gb sticks in the unused paired slots or they have to be the same as the 2x512Mb already in paired slots...

If you can put 1Gb sticks in at all, then you have to put in only 1Gb sticks - removing the existing 512Mb ones. Otherwise you could fill the remaining slots in the group with more of the same 512Mb sized ones as you already have.

Cheers...

And as a side note I believe that having more than 3GB of RAM is pointless. Something to do with the memory addresses being used for things like graphics cards and peripherals I think. However, you're only going for 2GB so you should be okay.