HW Q: mixed DIMMs?

[zombie67]

Okay, I know that in some architectures, having DIMMs that are not the same can cause speed issues. Or rather, they will not be working as fast as DIMMs that are the same. I think the chip-set has something to do with it.

In any case, here is my question:

I have a Sandy Bridge i7 Mac Mini. It has 2x 2gb SO-DIMMs. I want to know the impact to performance if I replace one of those DIMMs with an 8gb DIMM. It recognizes all 10gb, but I want to know if there will be any crunching performance degradation, and if so, how much.

Here are the specs:

CPU: i7-2635QM
DIMMS: 1333 MHz DDR3

I assume differing timing of the DIMMs may also effect the answer. Assume the same for now. I will have to shut down and open machines to find out. And that will require some tasks to complete first.

TIA!

[John P. Myers]

The only negative i'm aware of is when the 2 modules are of different speeds. It will then always only run as fast as the slowest one. There may be issues with an imbalance between chips though that could cause a speed drop after you use more than 2x the amount of memory on the smallest module (4GB in your case). It would be unnoticeable though. I wouldn't worry about it.

[zombie67]

Thanks!