Memory and the Questions It Brings

[Hammy]

So I peeled open this new rig last Saturday thanks to the crisis brought on by Crysis.

It's actually not new- it's new to me, 1 yr old from my Pop who went Macintosh on me. And yes, I say that to be what it seems - no different than the thing people who work in post offices tend to do when they are from Wisconsin ( no offense to Wisconsin - they do have cheese and the Packers)

Anyways, the thing here is that I added a new power supply, swapped in the new video card that was donated by Nvidia via someone at my company, and then I noticed it had only 2 GB of DDR2.

I pulled that out and saw it was DDR2 555. Wth?

Is that even right? I went to the geek shop I always go to when I am confused to the point of being embarassed because it should be something I know, and as odd as it sounds- I really dont care what Mr. Kim thinks as he laughs at me. In fact, I think the stupider I sound the better prices he gives me. (who cares- I gave him a bottle of wine for Xmas last year and he gave me a 2GB USB key).

The choices were 500 or 800.
I put the 800 in my PC because I half hope it blows up so I can make an excuse to build a nice steady gamer like Cain did recently.....

SO-

What is the deal? Am I going to hell for using 800?
What is the right thing to do?
There is no tuning fork on the mobo- its an OEM board of the worst degree.....

Thanks in advance,

Hammy

[mapes]

I think in the worse case nothing will change. From what I've heard from various H/W designers I've worked with is that you can always put faster ram into slower slots because the ram is driven by the slot. So the ram is going to be running at 500 instead of 800.

[mapes]

S
Is that even right? I went to the geek shop I always go to when I am confused to the point of being embarassed because it should be something I know, and as odd as it sounds- I really dont care what Mr. Kim thinks as he laughs at me. In fact, I think the stupider I sound the better prices he gives me. (who cares- I gave him a bottle of wine for Xmas last year and he gave me a 2GB USB key).
Hammy

BTW I have this image of a very old Short Stop (from Temple of Doom) pointing and laughing at you...for some reason.

[{CLR}geneSW]

I think in the worse case nothing will change. From what I've heard from various H/W designers I've worked with is that you can always put faster ram into slower slots because the ram is driven by the slot. So the ram is going to be running at 500 instead of 800.

This is dead on right. Couldn't have said it any better.

[WalkinTarget]

DDR2 RAM should be either 533 or 667 ... so that 500 is an odd number to be dealing with. I'll assume you just typed 555 just because you could

[Apache Warrior]

At least he did not type 666.
Apache

[Hammy]

No-

OEM's like to fiddle with their components so that it makes you come to them if you cant find the match.

I suspect 555 is some arrangement like that.

in 1995 I had a drive burn out in a Compaq. I bought a new one from CompUsa, and when I got it home the connectors didnt fit. Thats because you couldnt use a drive you didnt buy from Compaq in it.

[WalkinTarget]

Ahhh, that is a weird one I have never encountered yet. Smacks of the infamous Dell proprietary power supplies, forcing you to order them from Dell. Dell's reasoning was that the ATX specs were in fact flawed, and 'their' way was a better solution.

Several users plugged in a standard PSU and watched as the magic smoke puffed out of their now bricked Dell PC, and Dell just recently decided to go back to using a standard PSU in their PCs.

If you do any work on a Dell PC built in the years 2002-2007, be aware of this before you become one of those victims.

[mapes]

Regardless as long as the memory stick is faster than the slot speed it shouldn't be a prob.

[juneau]

Just make sure it's recieveing the correct voltage. DDR2-800 is normally 2.0-2.2V.

[Hammy]

Just make sure it's recieveing the correct voltage. DDR2-800 is normally 2.0-2.2V.

Being that I have no control over this in the bios....how the heck will I do that ?