Hey, well here it goes,

My new motherboard Asus A8N32 deluxe supports ram DDR266/333/400MHz SDR RAM. Recently i bought 2x 1 gig DDR3200 400MHz but CPU-z is showing that its only 200MHz, and was wondering how i can fix it to run at 400, and also does CPU-z actually tell you the MHz yr memory is running at, and if not how to find it?

also in a nother computer iv got a 1gig 200Mhz and a 256 mb 166MHz memory, now i know my 1 gig memory will only run as fast as the 166MHz and was wondering would i get better performance if i just took out the 256mb 166hz memory out completely, in this computer i have intel 2.5 ghz and runz at 2500MHz...

thanx guys i hope the above made sence

Hi there,
Firstly, welcome to CompuForums. I hope that you can visit our forum often in the future and post - rather than just receiving our help and advice, and then disappear. We provide our help for free, and all we ask in return is that you participate in our forum and refer your friends, or consider a premium membership.

To answer your first query - double-check both the motherboard and both RAM sticks are 400mhz. Also, if you had an old one in there before - did you remove the old sticks/s? You may just need to tweak a BIOS setting if everything is @400mhz.

And for your second query, 1GB is plenty enough RAM for a computer running XP [or Linux] and in my opinion sacrificing 256mb for more RAM speed is worth it. In fact - the system I am on "only" has 512mb and I run XP comfortably [with a 2.8ghz single-core Pent4 - I'm not a gamer].

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Ash
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Hi. What you see in CPU-Z is due to the RAM being DDR. Let's say that the FSB is rated at 400 MHz. In order to get an effective memory bandwidth of 400MHz, the DDR (double data rate) RAM is clocked at 200MHz (to give an effective of 2x200=400MHz bandwidth--the 2 is due to the ram operating in double data rate mode). CPU-Z should be reporting DDR400 (aka PC3200) as 200MHz--this is correct, and everything is functioning normally. The RAM BUS only operates at 200MHz, but the effective speed is 400MHz because of how the RAM is designed--that's the simplest way to explain it.

Regarding your other computer--You would see higher memory bandwidth if you took out the 166MHz stick (assuming the other RAM operates at faster than 166MHz). This is because the memory controller can only operate as fast as the slowest piece of RAM it can access. However, if you do more RAM-intensive things (like photo or video editing), you might be better off having more RAM that is slightly slower as opposed to less RAM that is faster. However, considering that the difference is 1.25 GB vs 1GB, you might as well dump the tiny piece of 256 so you have a fast 1GB system. That's just my opinion.

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AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (@2.6 GHz)
2x1GB OCZ Spec. Ops. PC3200
ASRock Dual939-SATA2
Antec TruePower 550 watt PSU
80 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
300 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
120 GB Maxtor ATA/133 7200 rpm
ATI Radeon x1950 Pro

thanx guys that was a big help, i understand now, thanx for clearing stuff up, and ill try post as much as possible if i have anything i could help anyone with with! : )