My brother just kindly gave me a 1gb stick of ram, at the moment I have two sticks of 512 in there. Could I put the 1gb stick in with the two sticks of 512?
Some people have told me it is safe to mix, and some people have told me I shouldn't...

will do, thanks for the quick reply

Is it an AMD based system?, if so they dont like running with odd numbers of sticks, also if its a dual-channel P4 board, your system will actually run slower if you dont have "pairs".

Dan,

I just tried it with 512x2 & the 1gb, 512x2, and the 1gb on it's own. Unsuprisingly the 512x2 and 1gb give the same performance (as far as I can tell) and the 512x2 & 1gb together seems to be quite a bit slower. I am going to put the two 512's on ebay then buy another 1gb.

Quote :

Is it an AMD based system?

Yes, an Athlon 3000

You shouldn't mix and match. More so if it's different sizes on each stick. When buying ram you want it to match everything to get best preformance out of it. Mix and match can create instabalities.

This sounds stupid, but make sure the new RAM stick you buy is the same speed as the one you have.