More ram or better ram?

[MyBudgetPC builder]

Hi there. I got this friend who is willing to sell me a 1gb ram stick for $12, and he hasn't used it much too. I was planning to buy a corsair 2gb, and add this to my system. But it is a Buffalo select memory, and I'm not sure it can have the same timings as the corsair. So I might have to "loosen" the timings on both to have them the same. Is timings very important, or should I get 3gb of ram? Or can I put rams with different cas and timings together?

[The Wise Monkey]

All motherboards start off with generic settings for all RAM - I think that they are set at 5-5-5-18. You're probably better off getting the corsair, as its only $37 at the moment and you know that it will be brand new.

You can run memory of different speeds together e.g. PC2-6400 and PC2-5300, as they will both run at the lower speed.