On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:44:28 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.com> uttered
like so:

>I don't have any experience with FBDIMMs, but it would
>seem to me, if the BIOS feels the need to balance the
>access times of multiple DIMMs, then it can program
>each AMB for CAS6, or any CAS that doesn't violate the
>timing specs of the chips. (So the "slowest module" rules.)
>
>At this point, I don't see a reason to discard the
>dis-similar DIMMs.

Thanks again for the very useful info, Paul.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that there is no problem with
the motherboard, no voltage incompatibility issues, and no warranty
issues (the vendor, Dell, has been bending over backwards to help me
with this issue and has been extremely cooperative, probably because I
have a top-tier support plan, but possibly also because I bought such
an expensive system, and I buy a lot of business computers from them
and they want to keep my business!).

If I do keep some of the original faster DIMMs, then can anybody tell
me in what configuration they think I should mix them with the
replacement DIMMs? I have enough of these DIMMs now that I can mix
and match them pretty much any way that I want to, as long as at least
one of them is a slower-latency DIMM. I've wasted so much time
troubleshooting that I don't really want to spend any more time on it,
as long as I can get it to work error-free with minimal impact on
performance.