hey I have a motherboard that uses PC3200 400Mhz ram. Can I use PC4400 550MHz ram? If not why do they make ram like that when I dont see any motherboards that say they can handle it? Is it for overclocking?
In theory you can use 550Mhz ram in a 400Mhz mobo but the higher speed sticks would clock themselves down to the same frequency as the lower spec stuff so there's no real performance gain to be had. In practise however it from what I can remmber anything that runs much above 400Mhz is likely to be DDR2, especially if its 550Mhz so you need to look for DDR2 compatible mobo's rather than 550Mhz ones to start with, before narrowing your search down. Hope that helps
It may be that one motherboard (the one you have) takes DDR RAM and the one with 550 takes SD RAM (which is a newer type of ram for newer comps) If not sorry..
I agree with everyone here. But I would go to your Motherboards website and see if those memory sticks are compatible with your mobo.