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The MB is Asus P5Q Pro w/ E8400. There are currently 4GBs (2 sticks) Mushkin Blackline DDR2-800 5-4-4-15. The MB has 4 slots A1, A2, B1, B2. The A1 and B1 slots are colored yellow, and that's where the sticks currently reside. (The user manual says to use the yellow slots for overclocking. Memory OCd well but one of these cores is marginally stable at higher speed so it's all set default now.)

Now I need to go up to 8GB. The Blackline is now longer made but can still be had - for a small fortune. So I bought 4GB of used Markvision** 5-5-5-15. (I know; I never heard of them either. But $14!) So the question is, how should I configure the new setup?

Should I leave the Blackline in the yellow slots, or segregate the two batches by channel?

Any point in running the memory with a faster clock and leaving the CPU at 3GHz?


** Markvision is a Lexmark brand. No idea who actually makes it.

I would configure each channel the same (one of each kind of DIMM) and set the timings per the slower sticks. Probably doesn't much matter which type of DIMM goes in the yellow slots, but if you feel like tinkering you could experiment to figure out whether you're able to set better timings with the old or new DIMMs in those slots.

You may also need to underclock the RAM (or at least relax the timings) to use all of the slots. It was not uncommon for DDR2 motherbords to be unstable if you filled all slots and tried to run at rated speed. If you were hitting the pagefile with 4GB RAM then having 8GB will still be a win even if you need to run it slower.