should i buy a matched pair of DDR400?

[aeiah]

my specs:

amd x2 3800, nvidia 7800gt, Asus A8N-VM

i used to have 2 x 1gb of DDR400 ram, but one of the sticks broke. should i get a matched pair, or can i just buy another 1GB stick without worrying about lower performance? if i buy a matched pair, would it be a good idea or bad idea to use my existing one as well? (so, matched pair 2x1gb + existing 1gb)

thanks

[Limpan]

I would say that either way is fine.
If you choose to buy 1x1GB and replace the erronous one make sure it's the same speed, not only frequency (400 MHz) but latency (5-3-3-3 or similar).
If you buy another pair of matched modules and use it with your current memory (total of 3x1GB) you will not be able to run it in dual channel mode. That may not be a big issue as you probably only gain about 10% performance by using dual channel. So in this case you'll be choosing from 50% more memory (1GB + 2x2GB) or 10% faster memory (2x1GB).

[aeiah]

thanks. ill probably just go with a 1x1gb matched to the one i have. for what i do i dont think there's any need to have more than 2gb ram right now

[Toet]

Do you experience any loss of performance using the 1GB? And does your swap space ever get used for more than some kb's?

If no to both, why bother to put in extra mem?

[aeiah]

well linux scales its use of ram, doesnt it? the more it has the more it loads into ram? it'd be nice to load more stuff in there for performance, as things are a little bit more sluggish without having the dual channel ram anymore. it loads a lot less into ram now it sees that ive got 1gb as opposed to 2gb, and sometimes it does get pretty high up there with gimp, exaile, bittorrent etc running.

[Joeb454]

Usually it's best to have 2 sticks of paired RAM, however if you know exactly what stick of RAM you already have, you should be fine buying the same one