interleaving RAM without buying a matched pair

[debrey]

So I'm seriously considering getting a 2 Ghz [edit:fixed] MBP, which comes with 1 Gig of RAM. I'd like to buy another stick and have it use the dual channel system. I've read and been told that it is possible to have two sticks that are from different companies still interleave. Is there any way to predict when this will happen? Any way I can try to make this happen?

Thanks,
David

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

I suppose you mean 2ghz.. I don't see why that situation wouldn't work (of course the two would have to be very similar), but you might want to do a bit more digging. You may run into some problems down the road. Or, worst case, your machine won't run with the two brands. I haven't tried this on a mac, but it seemed to work on my pc.

 

[WildCowboy]

Tough to say...hopefully CanadaRAM will drop by this thread at some point to drop his two cents.

To my knowledge, there are an awful lot of specs that need to be identical in order for interleaving to work, many of which are not easy for the end user to figure out. Hence the advice to buy the sticks at the same time.

Yes, people have had occasional success interleaving different brands, but it seems to be pretty random. They do the best they can to match specs and then hope for the best...no guarantees.

You can inspect the RAM that comes with your machine and see if you can get a good fix on the origin of the module and then track down another one. I'm not sure how simple this is to do in practice.

 

[jkieffer72]

How can you tell if the computer is running in dual channel mode? does it show up somewhere in system profiler?