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I was playing warhammer with 2 gigs of ram and the game ran pretty damn smooth (full settings, and all).... but i figured more memory couldn't hurt and i had 2 x 256mb sticks just laying around.

I installed those for a total of about 2.5 gigs of ram... now when i play the game it is slow as crap... does anyone know why?

All the clock speeds matched and everything... the only differnce was size, but that should not matter to my knowledge... I have a total of two x 1 gig sticks and 2 x 256 sticks, but game is way slower!

ill obviously be taking those 2x 256 sticks out now... i just wanted to know why more ram would do this (if clock speeds match)

is the big size difference between sticks causing this?

it just makes no sense.

P.S. i'm using a 512mb 9800 GTX.... does maybe the 512 card not interact well with the 256 sticks?

Also could it be because the timings did not match? I'm not sure if they did or not, because the sticks were old, but i can check when i take them out and see if the total timings of memory are different, but would that even cause a problem if the clocks are the same?

Run CPU-Z and see what it tells you about the memory. It's impossible to say unless you give us all the info (motherboard model, DIMM info) but some motherboards have to drop the bus speed when all four slots are occupied. Also, is it possible you didn't get the memory aligned on the channels correctly (ie, you have both GB sticks on one channel and the two 256 sticks on the other)?

UberGerbil wrote:

Run CPU-Z and see what it tells you about the memory. It's impossible to say unless you give us all the info (motherboard model, DIMM info) but some motherboards have to drop the bus speed when all four slots are occupied. Also, is it possible you didn't get the memory aligned on the channels correctly (ie, you have both GB sticks on one channel and the two 256 sticks on the other)?

i'm pretty sure the ram is in the right order..... its an Intel E210882 board with DIMM (DDR 2)... the order i put them in goes like this

1GB-256______1GB-256.... (alternating, i believe thats right)

According to my bios all the sticks are at 533...

According to CPU-Z. the max for the 1gb is 333 mhz, and the max for the 256 is 266 mhz.... so why does my bios read all of them at 533mhz? if the 256 is really slower, thats probably why it slowed the game down... is it normal for bios to be off like that?

The BIOS isn't off. All of your RAM is being run at 266MHz, which (thanks to the wonders of Double Data Rate) means data is being delivered at 533MHz, which is what your BIOS is reporting. All the RAM has to run at the same speed, which will be the speed of the slowest stick. Your 1GB sticks are capable of 333MHz; when you had just the two 1GB sticks, they were running at 333MHz which your BIOS would've reported as 667MHz. However, adding slower RAM means you handicap your fast RAM. Sometimes that can be worth it (if you're really low on memory and the system is thrashing the page file, giving it more RAM can speed things up even if it's slow RAM). Many times, as you have seen, it isn't.

UberGerbil wrote:

The BIOS isn't off. All of your RAM is being run at 266MHz, which (thanks to the wonders of Double Data Rate) means data is being delivered at 533MHz, which is what your BIOS is reporting. All the RAM has to run at the same speed, which will be the speed of the slowest stick. Your 1GB sticks are capable of 333MHz; when you had just the two 1GB sticks, they were running at 333MHz which your BIOS would've reported as 667MHz. However, adding slower RAM means you handicap your fast RAM. Sometimes that can be worth it (if you're really low on memory and the system is thrashing the page file, giving it more RAM can speed things up even if it's slow RAM). Many times, as you have seen, it isn't.

if only it were that simple... earlier in the thread i said the clock speeds were the same and there is a reason i thought that... when i had just the 2 x 1gig sticks my bios was still showing 533 mhz, i checked before i added the 2 x 256 mb so i could see if the new ones were lower and would drop the overall speed.... but after i put them in it was showing 533 mhz for all 4 sticks, so i thought they must have been all the same speed.... is it possible my mother board is limiting the top speed of the 1 gig sticks... so even though you say they should be 667, thats why the bios showed 533 mhz?

either way i will remove them... i'm just curious.

Non 1333FSB Core 2 Duo's run the memory at 266x2=533 at stock. There is no E210082 that I am aware of so I am guessing you have a E2180 which is a 200FSB CPU. AFAIK most motherboards will still attempt to run the ram at 266x2 so this is probably why you are seeing your 333 capable modules being run at 266.

Now, what did CPU-Z say about the memory configuration? Did it say single channel or dual channel?

Flying Fox wrote:

Non 1333FSB Core 2 Duo's run the memory at 266x2=533 at stock. There is no E210082 that I am aware of so I am guessing you have a E2180 which is a 200FSB CPU. AFAIK most motherboards will still attempt to run the ram at 266x2 so this is probably why you are seeing your 333 capable modules being run at 266.

Now, what did CPU-Z say about the memory configuration? Did it say single channel or dual channel?

sorry maybe i used the wrong number... the other number on the board is OM3918 its an intel 845 series. my cpu has an 800 FSB... it's the pentium 4 3.0 with HT. The memory was in dual channel. yea the CPU-Z says max bandwith for those is 333 so it must be the board limiting it to 266...