PC100 memory question

commonsensecommonsense
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I've got a G4 Cube with these three PC100 sticks:



- 512 MB PC100 2-2-2

- 512 MB PC100 2-2-2

- 128 MB PC100 3-3-3



Now, I know OS X LOVES RAM, so I fed it with as much as I could for now.



What I'm curious about is . . . I know 3-3-3 is slower than 2-2-2. But I also know that the more RAM you add, the more you help performance.



I also know that having a single 3-3-3 chip is going to force the entire bus to run slower. If I removed the 128 MB stick, the two remaining 512s would run at 2-2-2. But I'd have less RAM. (Admittedly not that much less, but less.)



Is it worth it to remove the 128 stick, so that the whole thing can run at 2-2-2, or is the performance gain from having that extra 128 MB of RAM worth having it all run at 3-3-3?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    arakageetaarakageeta Posts: 141member
    RAM is pretty easy to swap in and out. Why not try both and see? I'm sure you could find some bench marking tools out there.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    micheal kellymicheal kelly Posts: 1member
    You probably won't notice much of a difference, but yes you are correct. Putting a slower DIMM in there will cause all the DIMMs to slow to the same speed.



    Memory is relatively cheap these days. Why not just go pick up a faster 128 MB DIMM if you're concerned about it?
  • Reply 3 of 3
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    [quote]Originally posted by CommonSense:

    <strong>I've got a G4 Cube with these three PC100 sticks:



    - 512 MB PC100 2-2-2

    - 512 MB PC100 2-2-2

    - 128 MB PC100 3-3-3



    Now, I know OS X LOVES RAM, so I fed it with as much as I could for now.



    What I'm curious about is . . . I know 3-3-3 is slower than 2-2-2. But I also know that the more RAM you add, the more you help performance.



    I also know that having a single 3-3-3 chip is going to force the entire bus to run slower. If I removed the 128 MB stick, the two remaining 512s would run at 2-2-2. But I'd have less RAM. (Admittedly not that much less, but less.)



    Is it worth it to remove the 128 stick, so that the whole thing can run at 2-2-2, or is the performance gain from having that extra 128 MB of RAM worth having it all run at 3-3-3?</strong><hr></blockquote>

    i doubt that 128 MB of ram less will make a difference when you have 1 GByte of RAM, i doubt either that you will see a difference between the two types of memory in real applications, you should only see a difference in memory benchmarks.
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