Will PC2100 RAM slow down computer that takes PC2700?

[CharlesBlackstone]

Hi, I want to give my friend's son a gig of ram I took out of my Dell
Lattitude D800 laptop, for his Dell Inspiron 8600. He currently only
has half a gig. His machine takes newer PC2700 ram whereas mine is
PC2100 ram. How much will PC2100 ram slow his machine?

Thanks much...

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi, I want to give my friend's son a gig of ram I took out of my Dell
Lattitude D800 laptop, for his Dell Inspiron 8600. He currently only
has half a gig. His machine takes newer PC2700 ram whereas mine
is PC2100 ram. How much will PC2100 ram slow his machine?

Basically the mathematical ratio, 22%

 

[Joel]

Hi, I want to give my friend's son a gig of ram I took out of my Dell
Lattitude D800 laptop, for his Dell Inspiron 8600. He currently only
has half a gig. His machine takes newer PC2700 ram whereas mine is
PC2100 ram. How much will PC2100 ram slow his machine?

Thanks much...

I have always built my own systems and because the price difference
between RAM speed often very little, so I usually get a faster speed just
incase I upgrade the mboard and can use the old RAM on newer and faster
mboard (which I did quite a few times). And unlike the old days back to
8087 - 386 -486 etc. the newer system is fast and cheap enough so I never
care to run benchmark or messing with CMOS to squeeze few hertz out of
hot-working-CPU <g>

Me, I can see PC2100 is little slower than PC2700, but the question is if
his D800 can benefit the max speed or PC2700 is faster than the D800 can
handle. And I think the 512MB system will benefit from extra 1GB (and may
not much if he doesn't use heavy program?)

So, just give it a try, he can always remove it if it doesn't work or
help.

 

[Mike Walsh]

If his PC is designed for PC2700 RAM i.e. the bus is running at 333 Mhz, the PC2100 RAM will not work. If the bus is running at 266 Mhz the PC2100 RAM will work. You could change the bus speed from 333 Mhz to 266 Mhz to get the memory to work, but that would also slow down the processor.

 

[paulmd]

Hi, I want to give my friend's son a gig of ram I took out of my Dell
Lattitude D800 laptop, for his Dell Inspiron 8600. He currently only
has half a gig. His machine takes newer PC2700 ram whereas mine is
PC2100 ram. How much will PC2100 ram slow his machine?

Thanks much...

Because of potential instablilty problems (not so much speed), go with
the specified ram, or faster.

You will likely get away with the slower Ram.... but no promises here.

 

[Sleepy]

Hi, I want to give my friend's son a gig of ram I took out of my Dell
Lattitude D800 laptop, for his Dell Inspiron 8600. He currently only
has half a gig. His machine takes newer PC2700 ram whereas mine is
PC2100 ram. How much will PC2100 ram slow his machine?

Thanks much...

The boost he will get from having 1.5gb of RAM will more than compensate the
small drop in RAM speed. Use CPU-Z to check the RAM timings of all 3 sticks
and make sure the bios settings are set appropiately.

 

[Vanguard]

Hi, I want to give my friend's son a gig of ram I took out of my Dell
Lattitude D800 laptop, for his Dell Inspiron 8600. He currently only
has half a gig. His machine takes newer PC2700 ram whereas mine is
PC2100 ram. How much will PC2100 ram slow his machine?

Thanks much...

Questioned cannot be answered. Why? Because you haven't a clue (or
didn't provide *us* with one) as to WHAT you intend to replace. Just
because his "machine" can support PC-2700 doesn't mean that is what is
installed. Also, you haven't mentioned how much free memory is
available versus how much pagefile (virtual memory) is consumed to know
if the increase in RAM would allow more programs to remain in memory
rather than get paged out to the far slower hard drive.

Since you aren't going to use the RAM anyway, what's the problem in just
giving it to the boy and letting him figure out if it helps him or not?
First check with only your old memory in the boy's computer. Check for
responsiveness after the install. Then see if the boy can reuse his old
modules with yours. If so, great. If not, he'll still have more than
before which means more programs (or more of each program) can be in
faster memory instead of the pagefile. Just go do it and test if it got
better.

 

[Joel]

Questioned cannot be answered. Why? Because you haven't a clue (or
didn't provide *us* with one) as to WHAT you intend to replace. Just
because his "machine" can support PC-2700 doesn't mean that is what is
installed. Also, you haven't mentioned how much free memory is
available versus how much pagefile (virtual memory) is consumed to know
if the increase in RAM would allow more programs to remain in memory
rather than get paged out to the far slower hard drive.

Since you aren't going to use the RAM anyway, what's the problem in just
giving it to the boy and letting him figure out if it helps him or not?
First check with only your old memory in the boy's computer. Check for
responsiveness after the install. Then see if the boy can reuse his old
modules with yours. If so, great. If not, he'll still have more than
before which means more programs (or more of each program) can be in
faster memory instead of the pagefile. Just go do it and test if it got
better.

Hahaha the man is giving away, but wanna make sure that the boy's system
will benefit from extra RAM not slowing down or causing problem.

 

[Vanguard]

Hahaha the man is giving away, but wanna make sure that the boy's
system
will benefit from extra RAM not slowing down or causing problem.

And so what if the donated memory slows down the boy's computer? There
will still be the original RAM to returned to. RAM doesn't
self-destruct when removed; otherwise, the donating adult couldn't even
contemplate giving to the boy. It's very possible slower memory will
make the boy's computer run faster. I replaced my CAS-2.5 512MB (2
sticks) with CAS-3 2GB (2 sticks) and my system is a hell of lot
speedier just because more of the programs are in memory than residing
in the slower pagefile.

Some folks will claim that you don't need more memory if you see free
physical memory is still available in Task Manager's Processes panel.
The argument goes that if you have free memory then you don't need more
since you old stuff hasn't been fully consumed yet. They neglect to
mention that the next program may want more than what is currently free.
They also neglect to add the VM column (virtual memory) to see how much
TOTAL memory the program(s) actually consumes. Programs will ask for a
certain amount of memory that they would like to have along with a
minimum amount that they must have. If they can't get their max, more
of their code goes into VM. A program may show up as using only 4MB of
real memory in Task Manager but when you look in the VM column then it
may be consuming an additional 40MB. If you have more physical memory,
it is likely that less of the program needs to be swapped out (when it
is in use) which makes it speedier. So increasing memory room by adding
slower memory can still result in increased performance. The benchmarks
will look worse but then benchmarks aren't why you bought the computer.
You're interested in how responsive is the OS and the applications.
Once you have more memory, there are tweaks that let you keep more of
the OS exec in real memory so it doesn't get swapping to the slow hard
drive in the pagefile. Slower specs does not necessarily equate to
slower results.

 

[Joel]

And so what if the donated memory slows down the boy's computer? There
will still be the original RAM to returned to. RAM doesn't
self-destruct when removed; otherwise, the donating adult couldn't even
contemplate giving to the boy. It's very possible slower memory will
make the boy's computer run faster. I replaced my CAS-2.5 512MB (2
sticks) with CAS-3 2GB (2 sticks) and my system is a hell of lot
speedier just because more of the programs are in memory than residing
in the slower pagefile.

<snip>

I use computer for photo retouching (Photoshop) and multimedia converting
and DVD authoring etc. so my system always have at least 2GB (and the
current system has 3GB).

It's no way I wanna work with 512M system these days.

 

[DaveW]

It will slow memory processes 33%. I wouldn't do it.