vanhelsing wrote:
would a dual channel SuperTalent kit 2g x2 get along with my current 2x1gb ones, even if their different timings or will they default all to the same?
Memory can sometimes be fussy when paired with different brands and speeds but those two kits should work fine with each other. As for their timings I think it will default to the slowest SPD settings (assuming you haven't manually set them in the BIOS) but I can't say for certain... that's a good question, I'll have to look into actually.
*UPDATE*Quote:
If you have two RAM modules with different timing figures then the BIOS takes the highest figure (slowest setting) to work with.
So what I said above seems to be correct.
vanhelsing wrote:
And if I was going to raid say 3 drives, 500gb, 250, and another 250g. Would a raid controller speed it up or just sit there uselessly? I know mobo has onboard RAID and other complexed raids need a card, just wondered if it was "faster" with a raid card..
If you wanted to speed things up what I would do is RAID 0 the two 250GB drives through your motherboard and just have the 500GB drive on it's own. It would be neat if you could RAID 0+1 those drives and have the 500GB drive mirroring the 2x250GB's stripped data for safety's sake but I haven't heard of a RAID controller that can handle that with only 1 drive doing the mirroring.
Is RAID 1.5 still around? I remember DFI introduced it a few years back and what it did was split the data over 3 drives so you get the speed benifits of RAID 0 and the security of RAID 1. If a single drive failed all your data would still be maintained on the 2 remaining drives and when you re-introduced a third drive the array would be rebuilt again. It was a really interesting idea but I'm not sure if it caught on with other manufacturers. Also, it would mean you're 500GB drive would be treated as a 250GB so you would be losing space as well. =\