Placement of ram blocks..

[OleWilly]

Hi

     I have two dimms on my motherboard. One 256 MB in the first bank and 1024 Mb in the second. Is that right placed ? - I mean should the 1024 MB be the sat in the first bank ?

OW

[menotu]

Hi

     I have two dimms on my motherboard. One 256 MB in the first bank and 1024 Mb in the second. Is that right placed ? - I mean should the 1024 MB be the sat in the first bank ?

OW

Does it see both ram modules?

If you open a konsole and enter

free -m

for size in megabytes

or

free -k

for size in kilobytes

[OleWilly]

Hi menotu

Yes

[ole@localhost ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1263       1237         25          0         12        726
-/+ buffers/cache:        499        764
Swap:         3992         18       3974
[ole@localhost ~]$ free -k
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1293860    1266564      27296          0      12672     743340
-/+ buffers/cache:     510552     783308
Swap:      4088500      18748    4069752
[ole@localhost ~]$

Someone told me that the biggest ram should be placed first ?

OW

[menotu]

I'm not sure that it really matters, especially as both are being seen and used.

Do you know what motherboard you have and the chipset?  Can pin it down then 

There are a lot of things that can occur like, if one ram module has a slower "cycle" than the other one they will both drop to the slower cycle (and umpteen things like that)

In some situations it's better (even necessary) to use modules of the same size/type to make it work and/or for optimum performance.

Any chance of finding/scrounging another 1GB module? as that will certainly give you a speed hike (mind you, you may not even need it if things are good as they are)

[T6]

some old mainboard will give more speed or will give preference to the first bank

i would put first the 1 gb ram module and second the 256 module

if both modules are same speed , good, if the 256 is slower than the 1 gb, remove it, it is slowing down your system and 1 gb for kde4 is enough

[menotu]

if both modules are same speed , good, if the 256 is slower than the 1 gb, remove it, it is slowing down your system and 1 gb for kde4 is enough

Hey T6 - question for ya.

So having the "extra" 256MB module doesn't compensate even though it's at a slower speed?

[T6]

lets say that you have a 256 mb module, ddr, running at 266mhz

the second module is 512 but is running at 400mhz

you will effectively get 768 mbs of ram but the slower module will force the faster module to work at 266mhz

you have lots of ram, slow ram

if you have less ram but faster, you will get a better experience using your pc

remember that ram is used in linux much less than on windows and when you run out of ram, hard disk compensates, fill 1 gb of ram requires a long web browser usage with lots of pages and lots of apps running at the same time, it is not easy to get there

there is no benefit on having a 256 mb module wasting electricity and doing nothing, if you check your ram usage after a day of kde4 use, will hardly get to 700mbs, if you close that browser system will free 200 to 400 mbs to be used again

the benefits of have lots of ram in this particular situation are very limited, inexistent practically

the only reason to have those two modules working would have xp virtualized usign 512 mbs of ram and letting the rest for onboard video card and for linux