My system originally had one 512 stick of unknown origin and two 256 sticks from kensington. I don't know anything else about those RAMs. I just bought a 512 stick from PNY, DDR400, and a gig stick from Centon, also DDR400. I put these two in with my old 512, expecting the huge increase I got when I upgraded my RAM to one gig, but there's been hardly any change. Doom 3 is faster, but the speed is also less constant. Before, the game would slow down a bit coming through doors and such, but now it slows intermittently as if it had a pulse. And Morrowind actually runs slower outdoors, and indoors has some weird slowdowns unlike anything I've seen. Normal slowdowns you feel like you're stuck in mud and the frames come more slowly one after the other. Now I can look around at the same speed, but the visuals get all choppy like cards being flipped to animate something. What's wrong? Is my RAM too cheap? Do I need a better processor? Is my RAM too mix'n matched?

The RAM doesnt really affect game performance unless there is a compatability problem. Adding more RAM mostly makes the game and levels load faster. Some motherboards dont like it when you mix and match RAM. Also if your old stick of 512mb is PC2100 or 2700 the new PC 3200 RAM will default to the lower speed. It would help to know your system specs.

Having a matched pair will defintly help with config....but the problems you are mentioning make the new ram sound faulty. There should not be that much of a performance hit.

Sean

I'm gonna return the lame RAM and get me 2 gigs of the same brand online. Thanks for your help.