Buying more RAM question

[ferrethouse]

I currently have two 256 meg chips in my computer. I have two slots empty. I'm looking to put another 512 chip in. The current chips say PC400 on them. I think that means they are DDR 400 megahertz. My motherboard has an 800 mhz system bus so I think the RAM is dual channel to take advantage of that (does that make sense?). This is the motherboard I have...

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d865perl/index.htm

I'm not sure what kind of memory to buy. It says the motherboard supports DDR 400 (is that dual channel?). I'm also not clear about what the PC3200 means. Do I want PC3200? How do I know. Anyway, I'm Canadian and want to buy from a Canadian source (no duties) like...

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=147&

Any help you guys can give me would be really appreciated.

 

[Kadahaf]

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pr...665000FS10047706&catid=10486&logon=&langid=EN

here you go, and if you don't understand ram look in my sig

 

[ferrethouse]

I'm not a fan of Futureshop because I find the mail in rebates to be a pain in the butt. I downloaded a program that told me what kind of memory is currently in my computer. I have 512 megs of dual channel DDR (2x256). So I just purchased 1 gig of dual channel DDR...

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=669365&CatId=1838

Follow up question...

I have four slots. Can I keep my 2x256 sticks in there with the 2x512 or do I have to pull them?

 

[Kadahaf]

no, you will still get dual channel (yes you can keep the 2x256)

not to bash TD, but their rebates arn't any better :S

 

[ferrethouse]

Yeah, they both offer the rebates - man I hate that. A few of FS items don't have rebates and I did buy my plasma tv there but I found a pretty good no rebate deal at TD this time

Thanks for the help!

BTW: Does it matter which slots I put the sticks. There are two bays beside each other and then another two bays a couple centimeters away. Right now there is one stick in each pair of bays (ie. not beside each other). Should I put the 512s side by side and the 256s side by side. Or does it matter?

 

[Kadahaf]

same colors for the 2x256 and same colors for the 2x512

if there are no different colors just stick them in any order