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I have a 3 years old ThinkCentre (A52, type 8381). It has 1GB of RAM in 4 256MB sticks. According to the model spec, it supports 400Mhz DDR2 memory. I would like to increase the amount of RAM I have, given how cheap 1-2GB sticks are today. However, someone told me faster memory sticks (say 800Mhz) cannot be used when only 400Mhz are supported. This is a bummer, because for some reason 1GB of 400Mhz DDR2 costs about 3-4 times more than a modern DDR2 stick with the same size. Is this really the case? Can't a memory stick work in a frequency lower than its optimal?
I ran CrucialScan, and it says I can install DDR2 PC2-5300 and DDR2 PC2-6400 memory, and then offers memories with that standard that run at a speed of 800Mhz rather than just 400. So, what's more significant, the nnnMhz speed or the PC2-nnnn standard? – eran – 2009-07-19T12:39:44.823
I had the wikipedia page in front of me when I wrote the first comment, but I'm not sure it's correct. Searching Google for PC2-6400 800Mhz returns a lot of pages where memory sticks of type PC2-6400 and speed 800Mhz are offered. For example, see http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A0973620&cs=19&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=27530&lid=627063. Given both values, which one should I rely on?
– eran – 2009-07-20T07:10:27.667Sometimes people say 800MHz instead of 800 Million Transfers per second. I have added another reference that explains this a bit more. You could read the initial parts of the DDR2_SDRAM Wikipedia page again with this in mind. – nik – 2009-07-20T08:06:03.570