Can I put DDR2 memory into a DDR3 motherboard?

[Tim]

Hey guys,

So I was wondering, is it possible to put DDR2 memory into a DDR3 motherboard?

I have a bunch of DDR2 RAM laying around and I'm building another server that could use DDR3 and was really wondering if DDR2 would fit. The motherboard is an X58 intel one and it lists DDR3, but would it downwork to DDR2?

Micro Center - X58M Socket 1366 X58 mATX Motherboard

Is the mobo

[ebony]

its like adding ddr2 to ddr 1 its not going to happon sorry tim the chips not the same they place the bit in a def place

[necrimus]

I ran DDR2 in my DDR3 motherboard for almost a year. But mine was not an x58. It was a quad core board. My current x58 won't use DDR2, according to the manual.

[LindlineOLD]

As long as its explicitly supported by the motherboard. Im pretty sure theres no backwards compatibility inherent with the SDRAM standard.

[Heartspark]

You have to run one or the other, you can't run both at the same time.

Only a few motherboards support. That one linked does not.

If you want to use the DDR2 ram you can always get one that does, Gigabyte's P35-DS3. It has 2 ddr3 slots if you wish to upgrade down the road.

[xartin]

Even if you could use DDR2 memory with a DDR3 motherboard why would you want to?
The performance hit would be atrocious.

[Tim]

Well I have 12G of DDR2 memory, and I happen to be needing a 12G system for a server, and I don't like to be wasteful.

I went ahead and just bought a socket 775 mobo and used the DDR2 and skipped DDR3 mobos all together.

Thanks for infoz guys!

[Heartspark]

Actually the performance hit is not atrocious, DDR3 is for more bandwidth, it does not actually have better speed over ddr2 that one would notice. Its like comparing SATA hardrive speeds vs IDE.