Memory question

Teny

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My computer currently has 2GB of ram, however, I want to upgrade to 4GB. I currently only have an 32-bit of Windows, and I do not want to buy another copy (of course I could find a way to get it, but let's not go there).
If I were to buy another 2GB of ram and make it a total of 4GB, will I only use 3.5GB of it? My GPU is an 512mb, and that's the only thing in my system that has it's own dedicated memory. Thanks.

EDIT - Oh, and I currently have this ram, CORSAIR XMS2 2GB. If you can, help me find some ram that will help me maintain performance and dual channel, and cost lower than what I currently have. I do OC by the way.
 
Wouldn't the voltage mess with my OC? It's not a huge OC, it's only an .5Ghz increase.
 
So then when I receive the ram you listed, I just have to put it in and don't have to adjust anything in BIOS?
I never messed with any of my RAM settings in BIOS, only my FSB, and made it unlinked with my RAM.
 
Hmm, well, I guess we will see. I hope the XMS2 will just go on sale so I can get them for cheaper and don't have to mess with any incompatibility.
 
Can I bump?

EDIT - Yep, looks like I can, I didn't want to create another thread asking question about memory. Anyways, I was searching online of DDR2 vs DDR3, and I found some benches, but they were 2-3 years old. On the benches, there are no increase between the two. Is that true even now?
 
Well.... if the clocks and latencies were the same, yes. A CPU isn't able to fully utilize the potential of DDR3, so as long as its dual channel, the only difference will be made by higher clocks, and (potentially) better timings.
 
Well.... if the clocks and latencies were the same, yes. A CPU isn't able to fully utilize the potential of DDR3, so as long as its dual channel, the only difference will be made by higher clocks, and (potentially) better timings.

DDR3 timings are worse than DDR2 timings, just the nature of the beast, if you can find DDR3 timings that run 5-5-5-15 sign me up, the speed is where the (little if any right now) advantage to DDR3 is...

also, I think when Teny asks about his OC with regards to the memory he's asking if each memory slot or set of slots regulates the voltages separately, running DDR2 memory that requires 2.2v to run at 4-4-4-12 may require you to loosen the timings if you have to drop the voltages to 1.8v or 1.9v to match the other two sticks of RAM which only run at 1.8v or 1.9v to achieve those same timings, which may mean running both sets at 5-5-5-15 instead of the desired 4-4-4-12, but I don't really know if the principles of memory speed apply to the timings as well, like if you have 3 sticks of 800MHz RAM and 1 stick of 667MHz RAM, then all 4 sticks will run at 667MHz, it seems sensible that all the RAM would run with the same timings and default to the slower timings as well...
 
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