RAM

[balor]

This might seem a stupid question but i'm not totally sure about it i have a FIC VB601 mobo, with a 128meg stick on it question is will installing a 64meg stick degrade performance?

[JeffSP]

If you take out the 128 and install the 64 you will need to use more swap space and your system performance will decrease but if you but them both in together your system performance will increase.

[balor]

yeah thanx i intended to run both one of my friends said that doing it with diff sizes of ram would effect the performance

[Axel]

I'm assuming these are SDRAM DIMM sticks.

Here's what to look for. The slowest stick will determine the speed of your RAM - if the 128 is 100 and the 64 is 66, then both sticks will probably run at 66 - you've just lost some performance.

Next will be access speed. If the 128 is 7.5NS and the 64 is 8NS, chances are both will function with an 8 NS access speed.

Next thing to consider is your OS.

Unless you are running NT or LINUX, your system is unlikely to make good use of anything over the 128 stick anyway. Windows 95 typically stops making good use of available RAM resources after the first 64MB, my system at home has 96MB - I'm not planning on adding any.

win98 typically stops making good use of available RAM at 128MB.

NT, on the other hand, will use everything you give it and then ask for more ( it uses page files as swap area - the more page file area used, the more RAM NT wants to avoid using page files )