I have a G5 quad running 10.4.9, all the latest updates.
It had 2x256 sticks from apple in it, and I upgraded right off the bat with 4 1GB sticks, so for the last 18 months or so it's been running fine with 4.5 GB, with all the sticks reported in System Profiler as DDR2 SDRAM PC2-4200U-444 OK. (4x1GB and 2x256MB, respectively)
Anyhooo, I found 2 random sticks of memory laying around the office, Labeled pc2-5300, and knowing my quad needed only 4200 I figured what the heck and stuck it in. All my experience with RAM told me that faster ram will just slow down to the memory speed of the machine... So the machine booted fine but listed the memory (in system profiler) as 1GB DDR2 SDRAM PC2-3200-288 ECC. So it was ECC memory, bummer. My judgement told me to not mix and match ECC and non-ECC memory, plus it seemed to be slower then the sticker said on it, so I took it out. But seeing all that ram finally spurred me to order 4 GB (4x1GB sticks, for a total of $160, seemed like a deal) from mwave.com.
Anyway Ram came today, it was Kingston ValueRAM, PC2-5300 CL5 Non-ECC. (of note, the 2x256MB chips from apple that I pulled for this were pc2-4200U CL4.)
I plopped them in, machine booted fine (and is running fine now) but System profiler again reports the new memory as DDR2 SDRAM PC2-3200U-288. These new chips are running along side my older ram which is still listed as pc2-4200U-444. I thought faster ram downclocked, but this downclock seems a little overkill. Is it because it's CL5 and not CL4? Should I return this PC2-5300 memory and replace it with PC2-4200?
-Edit- Cleared up some confusing writing on my part 8-).
Top
