PCTech Forums

Hello,
My current Dell runs with 128 megs of PC133 memory. A friend of mine donated a hard drive-less computer to me which has 128 megs of PC100 memory. Could I put the PC100 mem in to my Dell? Someone told me that it would bring down the speed of the PC133 to 100. Personally, I think that's an okay sacrifice to endure if I'm going to double my memory. I tried it, and the computer said I had 256 megs..and of course everything ran much faster, but when someone else told me Id get some error messages every once in a while due to the two sticks not being the exact same, I took the PC100 memory out.

Suggestions?

You will get a drop to 100 in speed--and it should work ok--you could get a glitch now and then, and you might be able to blame it on that. The real problem might occure on a new install that would consistently fail because of the memory. go ahead and use it.

PC133 SDRAM is just about the same as PC100 SDRAM except for the bus speed is 133 MHz instead of 100 MHz.

So it would depend on your computer and what bus speed it runs at. Some computers will only run at 100 MHz but you can still use PC 133, sometimes the PC 133 is cheaper than the PC 100, your not harming your computer just using the memory at the lower bus speed.