dear anyone, I recently got a 166mhz kingston 256mb ram from my friend and i have a MSI motherboard with a 266mhz bus. and in the users manual it says the motherboard cana fix 266mhz rams! So can i put THIS 133MHZ RAM INTO MY 266MHZ MSI MOTHERBOARD

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I needed some more Ram in my laptop and the Compaq specs said the max Ram for the Model was 96 Meg. The native chip had 32 Meg, so I should only be allowed to add 64 more Meg, but a buddy had a 128 Meg card that worked when it was installed, so it is still there and the OS picks up the toal Ram, so it is staying. I don't know if the speed of the card is as critical or not, so I just wanted to let you know that mis-matching SOMETIMES works. It may not work as well as a matched item, but it may work all the same. But let a Hardware type come by and tell you what they would do before you toast the thing.

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The most important thing to know when you put in a new RAM, is that it most use the same standard, that is, that all the modules are either SDRAM, or DDR... Even thought it is physically impossible to switch the two, there are known situations where people put in SDRAM modules in DDR slots by force. That of course is NOT good

Now, frequency mismatch, is not that big problem. Your motherboard SUPPORTS 266MHz memory. That means if you put, say, 333MHz DDR modules, it MAY not work, or work on 266MHz... Now, if you put 166MHz DDR module on your motherboard, and you already have a 266MHz module installed, both modules will work on 166MHz. That would universaly sound like: if you have two or more memory modules installed, all modules will work on the lowest speed of all the modules. Of course, there is also manufacturer compatibility issues, where two modules of different manufacturers refuse to work together, or you need to switch their slots, etc... If you have Kingston installed, and you plan on installing another Kingston, it should work fine, and no compatibility issue should occur.

In my opinnion, you should be fine using that 166MHz module, as long as it uses interface supported by your motherboard, probably DDR. But, just to be on the safe side, wait for a few more answers on this...

 

 

 

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If you are feeling particularly brave today, you can do what I used to do and pop it in and see if your system recognizes it. At worst, who knows. I just had a machine that wouldn't boot and beeped POST messages at me. I usually just try to match the type of ram that's already on the mother board.

And by that I mean if you already have for example, a PC133 stick of RAM, I would try to make sure the next stick is of the same type (PC133,PC100,DDR,etc.) and not necessarily the same size.(MB)

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So you have a 166MHZ RAM or a 133MHZ RAM that you want to fix onto your motherboard?

I've tried fixing different and incompatible RAMs on motherboards before on purpose to test what will hapen to the computer. There isn't any to worry because nothing is going to happen. Your data will not be lost, your computer will not explode, neither will your house blackout.

Hence you can try inserting those rams on your motherboard to see if it works. If it doesn't, your computer will simply not boot up or have consecutive beeping tones. Those beeping tones are a signal from your BIOS stating of hardware incompatibility or that the BIOs don't recognise one or more of your hardware installed. If this occur to you when you inserted the RAMS, simply remove it and replace with the working ones. Your computer will function as normal again without any damages caused.

If you want to know theoretically, refer to the manual for your motherboard. You said that the manual stated that the motherboard accepts 266MHZ RAMS, hence you can be sure that 266MHZ RAMS will work on your motherboard. Otherwise, you will have to try hands on, trial and error.

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