[Googer-Giger]

Hey guys, giving my DP 2.0 G5 to a friend at work who is going to use it for photoshop. It's got 2 gigs of DDR right now, but I have a bunch of 256mb sticks laying around, different brands. If I pair the memory up and add it in matching configurations, will I have to worry about latancies between a Crucial stick and an Infenon stick?

Just don't want to spend a lot of money on ram,

Jesse

[AKcrab]

I'm pretty sure that model required matched pairs.

[Waragainstsleep]

I have stuffed these with random 256MB sticks before now without issues. As long as they are all DDR 400MHz you should be ok.

[Big Mac]

If the pairs are made of different density chips it won't work. They should be in matched pairs per slot pair, but other than that you do not have to concern yourself with matching to the latencies of the other unrelated modules.

My beloved G5 just busted a processor that's not worth replacing.

[Waragainstsleep]

Which model do you have? Some of them will run on one CPU.

Also make sure to try and reseat them, I've seen them come back from the dead just by tightening the screws holding the module down.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

If the pairs are made of different density chips it won't work. They should be in matched pairs per slot pair, but other than that you do not have to concern yourself with matching to the latencies of the other unrelated modules.

My beloved G5 just busted a processor that's not worth replacing.

By "different density chips" you're referring to the old "same number of chips on the stick or it won't work" rule, right? I've always thought that was an excellent rule of thumb for paired banks in any case, but that also goes beyond the documentation provided by Apple. Apple specifies matched pairs, stating "Matched" in this context means that the two DIMMs have the same capacity and speed. A valid pair would be two 512 MB PC2700 DIMMs, for example." The linked article is decidedly unclear on the issue of "banks," though. The DP has two sets of two banks each, so it is even less clear how "matched" Apple wants the user to go. It's good to hear that experience shows you don't have to go very far in matching DIMMs.

[Googer-Giger]

Hey guys, it's an M9455LL/A, I know it requires ordered pairs, I just meant that if I added different brands of sticks of the same amount, would I have any problems. Waragainstsleep reassured me okay.

Thanks for the help I am gonna try to get this thing up to 4 gigs!

Jess

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Which model do you have? Some of them will run on one CPU.

Also make sure to try and reseat them, I've seen them come back from the dead just by tightening the screws holding the module down.

Yeah, the tech told me Rev. As run on one processor but not Rev Bs, so if it's dead I'm out of luck.

I'll keep in mind your advice about tightening the CPU down. I'm kind of heartbroken about it even though it hasn't been my main computer for months. I knew that G4s often experienced dead second processors, but I didn't think it would happen to my G5.

As for the matched pair thing, you really want to stick to matching the modules in the respective banks. Different chip densities that add up to the same amount per module may not work, but you can certainly try it.