Will Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo support DDR3 1600 MHz and DDR2 swap without OS format ?

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Naxal

Little Kid
Hello,

I recently purchased a GA-G41M-Combo motherboard after my older motherboard died. At present I am running the Motherboard with DDR2 RAMs (2 x 2 GB DDR2 800MHz). Now I wish to convert to DDR3 platform.

I have few question

  • Will the said motherboard support DDR3 1600 MHz RAM ??
  • If I install DDR3 RAM by just unplugging the DDR2, will it require me to install OS again or it will just work on fly ?
  • How much difference there will be between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600 ?
  • Which brand of RAM to prefer (value for money) considering little over clocking ?

I would be using a C2Q 6600 processor..

Thanks.
 

coderunknown

Retired Forum Mod
Will the said motherboard support DDR3 1600 MHz RAM ??

it'll downclock to 1333Mhz. But if you overclock then 1600Mhz may be possible.

If I install DDR3 RAM by just unplugging the DDR2, will it require me to install OS again or it will just work on fly ?

should work just fine.

How much difference there will be between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600 ?

for now keep using the DDR2 ram. DDR3 ram won't bring in much of an performance improvement. But in case you want, grab 1333Mhz as most value kit works fine even at 1600Mhz.

Which brand of RAM to prefer (value for money) considering little over clocking ?

you can try Corsair value series or G.Skill if the price difference is really low.
 
OP
N

Naxal

Little Kid
Thanks for the replies.

Sam said:
for now keep using the DDR2 ram. DDR3 ram won't bring in much of an performance improvement. But in case you want, grab 1333Mhz as most value kit works fine even at 1600Mhz.

Though it was not the exact question for thanks for the advice.

I wanted to know how much performance difference is there between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600

Sam said:
you can try Corsair value series or G.Skill if the price difference is really low.

I can see Tansend being the cheapest followed by Kingstone and then comes G.Skill and costiest it seems is the Corsiar..

Sam said:
it'll downclock to 1333Mhz. But if you overclock then 1600Mhz may be possible.

So the question is, should I buy a 1600 MHz, which will be under clocked by my motherboard to run at 1333. And then using BIOS, I set it force run at 1600 MHz frequency settings ??

or

should I buy 1333 MHz and over clock it to run it at 1600 MHz ??
 

topgear

Super Moderator
Staff member
^^ @ OP - if you install 1333 Mhz DDR3 ram modules the ram mdoules will run at 1066 Mhz speed - so to get 1333 Mhz you need to OC the ram modules - you need to do it keeping the cpu speed in mind and getting and uinsg 1600Mhz ram modules at 1600 Mhz speed might be tough with this board as you need to play with FSb, Cpu Speed, FSB:DRAM ratio speed a lot more and might even change few volt option as well.
 
OP
N

Naxal

Little Kid
^^ @ OP - if you install 1333 Mhz DDR3 ram modules the ram mdoules will run at 1066 Mhz speed

The Board manual says it will run 1333 MHz modules, then why wuld it underclck it further to 1066 MHz ??
 

panwala95

In the zone
because your processor natively has the ic for only ddr2 1066/ ddr3 1066
even if you oc your ram to > 1066, you wont notice any benefit because your processor can only handle ddr3 1066
anything above that is only a waste
 

coderunknown

Retired Forum Mod
The Board manual says it will run 1333 MHz modules, then why wuld it underclck it further to 1066 MHz ??

i overlooked something. 1333Mhz if you overclock ONLY or force it to run at that speed. native DDR3 supporting speed (without any added tweaking) is 1066Mhz.
 

TheSloth

The Slowest One
@Sam: Why? Currently He has DDR2 800MHz and if he use DDR3 1066MHz then why no improvement? And i asked you something in 'should i buy NP550 or not' thread.
 

topgear

Super Moderator
Staff member
^^ because at 1066 Mhz the DDr3 ram modules will have much higher latencies than DDr2 @ 800 Mhz and all the apps will perform almost same and in game Op will get max 2 fps increment which does not justify the price he is going to pay.
 
OP
N

Naxal

Little Kid
^^ because at 1066 Mhz the DDr3 ram modules will have much higher latencies than DDr2 @ 800 Mhz and all the apps will perform almost same and in game Op will get max 2 fps increment which does not justify the price he is going to pay.

But it can at-least safely run them till 1333MHz na ?? Still it wont be worth shifting to DDR3 ??
 

CyberKID

In search for Tech Gyan!
Yes. The Gigabyte's desc page says it all. You can run a DDR3 RAM at a max frequency of 1333 MHz, and that too not by default. It says:
  1. 2 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 8 GB of system memory (Note 1)
  2. Dual channel memory architecture
  3. Support for DDR3 1333(O.C.)/1066/800 MHz memory modules
Which means that your mobo supports 1333 MHz, only when you overclock your PC, else, it'll run on 1066 MHz.
IMO, Shifting to DDR3 is somewhat a future friendly upgrade. Given the fact that the OP has been limited to only 4 GB DDR2 RAM, in the current scenario, which he may upgrade to upto 8GB DDR3. As far as the performance improvement is concerned, there should be some. Given the fact that he could overclock his processor, and the RAM frequency will automatically increase, will possibly give him good performance improvements over DDR2 800 MHz.

In case OP wants, he could also overclock his DDR2 RAM upto 1066 MHz, as his mobo supports this.
 

CyberKID

In search for Tech Gyan!
DDR2 doesn't have capacities upto 8GB for each RAM stick. You can't find one. And even in case you are able to find a 4GB stick the prohibitive prices won't allow you to buy one.
 

TheSloth

The Slowest One
No no i mean to ask can't we use 4*2GB sticks. But there will be only 2 RAM slots. Now i understood what you meant in #15 post. Thank you for reply
 

CyberKID

In search for Tech Gyan!
The issue is that even if you go purchasing 4GB DDR2 (I'm not sure for how much you'll get one), I'm sure that it will be more than what you pay for 2x4GB DDR3. In any case, the OP can install 8GB ram, so, why not do this with DDR3 RAM.
BTW, all of us seem to be missing the original question, Will Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo support DDR3 1600 MHz and DDR2 swap without OS format ?
In My Opinion, yes. You'll need not to reinstall the OS for changing the RAM's.
 
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