To RAM or not to RAM? That is the question?

I have eight, and no one thing I ever do requires all eight.

However, I run virtual machines, including a complete copy of my older system for reference, which I almost never shut down (unless I'm shutting down my entire computer). If you run virtual machines, more is better.

Slight sidetrack: if you have nine, and its a relatively recent computer, you probably have a core i7-9xx in a LGA 1366 motherboard (triple channel memory architecture, so memory is usually slotted in triplicate thus the odd amount of RAM). So you certainly have a powerful enough system to be doing all sorts of unusual things if you wanted to. But without knowing what you actually do, its hard to say whether you would benefit from more memory. You could bring up the task manager and look at free physical memory. If that never seems to drop below gigabytes of ram (thousands of megabytes) then I'd say more RAM would have very limited usefulness to you.

I believe, based on stuff I've seen here and stuff I've read, that the only time you will run into a "conflict" is if the faster memory can not adjust down to the speed of the slower memory.

And I believe the speed and capacity need only to be the same in each of the pairs or triplets of modules - not between each of the pairs or triplets - depending on your motherboard. I'm not all that knowledgeable about clock speeds and I'm probably way over-simplifying ... but I've built my last 4 computers, and it works for me.


Storm

That's my understanding as well. Each pair should consist of 2 sticks of the same speed and capacity. Depending on the motherboard, it might be better to use the same speed for all pairs or the speed may adjust down the lowest pair and/or cause an issue, but as far as the capacity goes, one pair does not have to match another. A pair of 1g and a pair of 512mb should work just fine. ... I've also built my own last few systems with the same understanding, and have not had any issues either.

No!

It will not cause "conflicts". This is unmitigated FUD.

Capacity-wise, all you get is an additive effect up to the maximum memory supported by the motherboard and operating system.

1 GB
+
1 GB
+
.5 GB
+
.5 GB
=
3 GB

Speed-wise, some boards will revert to higher latency settings if you populate all the memory slots.

Also, speed-wise, the board will use the slowest module (the lowest common denominator) and run all the memory at that speed.

The only time you get "conflicts" is if you're running memory of a type/speed/configuration that the board/memory controller is not rated for.

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For running your operating system? No.
For running any single, non VM application? No.
For running large numbers of concurrent applications? Maybe.
For running large numbers of VMs? Maybe.


For gaming? Not really.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

The analogy there is RPMs on a car. A car with a V8 going at 60MPH will have a lower RPM than a car with a 4 or 6 cylinder going at the same speed.

You can even use the age old "it's simply more efficient" but I understand your pain trying to un-teach the megahertz myth from the P4 generation of consumers.

Well, it came with 9. I was thinking it would be fun to max it out but didn't know if I would ever have a use for it.

... and of course, "don't take this as a direct correlation with your mainboard." (Seeing that now with my old vs in progress system - old, each channel is grouped together, so 2x1 Gb would populate 1-1-0-0. New board? Same color, but separated, so 1-0-1-0.)

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