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Are there any benefits from running eg. two identical 1G rams over two different, but same-clocked? The motherboard doesn’t support dual-channel operation.

4 Answers 4

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There is often a very slight benefit. With even slightly different modules, you have to find some compromise settings. You can only choose one voltage, one clock speed, and one set of timings. So if one stick could get better timings with a higher voltage but the other one can't take that voltage, you wouldn't have that option. With identical sticks, their performance is closer to identical and they generally both work best at the same settings. But such micro-optimizations on RAM speeds and timings generally show only microscopic effects on real-world benchmarks.

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I don't know if this is still the case any more, but I remember when my machine would not boot up when I added a second stick of RAM to my Pentium-III machine. It turned out that the BIOS was auto-configuring the RAM settings using the SPD information from the stick in Slot 1, when the stick in Slot 2 had slightly slower timings. So, swapping them over, or manually configuring the RAM settings was the solution.

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In 99.999....% of cases no, however, in some rare cases ( mainly OEM systems ) one stick my not be compatible and cause issues.

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  • Only some pb appear with Dual-CHanel and "No-Name" Ram.
    – bZezzz
    Jan 13, 2012 at 19:31
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Generally there shouldn't be any problem, but it's always a good idea to use identical ones, because they are guaranteed to have the same timing and specs. Though don't worry too much if they are not, usually it won't be any problem.

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