RAM compatibility - pc2 5300 and 5400

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regeisle

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I have a thinkpad T60 on the way with 1gb (1 dimm) of pc2 5300 (ddr 667) and want to grab another 1gb stick from newegg to smooth out vista some. There's a good deal on pqi right now but it's 5400 (still 667). Will this work, and just run at the 5300 speed or am I safer spending another 20 bucks or so to get 5300 ram? Thanks
 
PC2-5300 and PC2-5400 refer to the same thing actually: DDR2 running at 667Mhz. The number just differs from manufacturer to manufacturer.

FYI, the numbers after PC2 is supposed to be the bandwidth of the memory, which is calculated as effective clock speed x bytes transferred per clock cycle. In the case of DDR2, 8 bytes (64 bits) get transferred per clock. So bandwidth = effective clock speeds x 8.

In the case of DDR2-667, bandwidth = 667Mhz x 8 Bytes = 5336 MB/s. As you can see, it's neither 5300 nor 5400, but manufacturers chose nice round numbers, so any of the two does the job (they're close enough).
 
Thank you there meithan...that is one thing I actually did not know haha. I'm glad that even I learn new things every day. I always wondered about that.
 
I have a thinkpad T60 on the way with 1gb (1 dimm) of pc2 5300 (ddr 667) and want to grab another 1gb stick from newegg to smooth out vista some.

I upgraded from XP Professional to Vista Business and had 1GB of RAM. Things were running very smooth, and then i decided to add another 1GB for a total of 2GB. I truly didn't notice any difference, my suggestion is to wait until you have the chance to play around with your system. I think 1GB is good enough. Save your money :happy:

Good Luck!
 
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