Which Ram?

ViperVenoM

ok im definetly going to get some more ram for my pc.....well different ram, even if i dont upgrade to 64bit yet..but the rams been a "need to buy" for about a year now and with my uni loan sooo nearly here ..i intend to blow some on some ram ..also making a little list up...already got an ATI silencer 3..and 2 coolermaster cooldrive 3 bays in...more to come probably...soon as i get money i just have to spend it on my pc ..i think its a disease :rolleyes:

the question is..what do i need, do i need tight timings or high fsb ones ..or both

main pc in rig is the one its going in..and i want something now thats gonna be nice and stable and get a bit more out of my pc and then when i do ..i think move onto s754 (before the huge leap into pci-e everything in 18 months or so when things are more settled and cheaper..dual core cpus and whatever) well when i go to s754 its gonna be even better and ill be able to get even more out of the ram and have some fun OC'ing the cpu..whichever i get..looking up the 3200 or 3400... ..as ive heard its to do with the ram how high you can take the cpu..isnt it?

so i need a gb of ram..thats gonna give my current set up a little boost and still have the extra to be taken further when i go to AMD64...price range i would think around £200..less is good though

what do people suggest...and hey does anyone want either sticks of ram ive got in my set up now

(my s754 may be closer than i hoped..passing my A-Levels..might entitle me to something.. ...least my next "upgrade" is only gonna be the cpu and motherboard..which will be a lot cheaper than ram as well..i was looking at like...£500 for it all before ) :eek:

Azza

Depends really.

Have a look around www.shop4memory.com and irish site with free delivery to England and Ireland they have quite a good selection. I would also consult COL LOKI's post on building a pc. He has a section on memory. I'm not sure. I think athlon xp at stock only support up to pc400 so you not need to go higher unless overclocking. Tight timings are important and that goes double for amd 64. Some many brands to choose from Geil OCZ Mushkin Crossair KingMax..etc makes my head hurt.

Oh and congradulations on getting your A levels.

Azza

Just looking again around for you.
Here some prices of AMD 64 rigs for you. I assume you want to spend about £500 sterling on a motherboard cpu and ram.
Current PCI-X cards are actually preforming poorer than AGP (that will change) so I would not be concerned about it.

Looking at www.overclock.co.uk whom I have dealt with on about 5 occasions and I highly recommend. Here is the kit I would recommend and there prices including vat.

AMD 64 3400 (stock heatskin and fan) £227.52
AMD 64 3200 (stock heatskin and fan) £152.69

MSI K8N Neo Platinum nforce 3 250GB (working pci lock) £83.46

Mow this is Bazzare they have 3 flavours of the best AMD 64 ram the OCZ Enhanced Bandwidth platinum edition . The 3500 is dearer than the 3700. Anyway 3700 is overkill not unless you seriously plan to over clock with water cooling or phase change. The other two will over clock well and you can get good timings.

PC 3200 £197.85
PC 3500 £234.92
PC 3700 £233.18.

www.jes.de is a very popular shopping ground with boards.ie members. These prices include vat. There prices are better but I have not dealt with them personally. Have heard generally good things about them.

AMD 64 3700 £338 (stock heatskin and fan)
AMD 64 3400 £195 (stock heatskin and fan)
AMD 64 3200 £134 (stock heatskin and fan)

They also do that above motherboard cheaper.

ViperVenoM

thanks for that

hmm..ok

so it looks like ill be going with the OCZ..although not sure which yet..so many choices :rolleyes:

im gonna get the ram first ..with the ATi silencer..and cooldrives..then its gonna be 1 last big expense on the motherboard and cpu, everyone seems to recommend the MSI board...so i think thats gonna be the board i get...if im gonna upgrade i think im gonna have to stretch to the 3400..even though i dont think i can really afford this im not sure how much money ill get at the end of this month..but since i blow all my cash on computers anyway.... :rolleyes:

i can get the ocz pc3500 and just leave it at 400mhz i guess...but if the pc3700 is cheaper..i might as well just get that i gues..it saves me money

by the time i finally do decide all these prices will have changed anyway...wot sort of performance jump am i gonna get would you think moving from my 2300mhz barton to a 3400 and better ram...what are they clocked at 2.2 or 2.4..which id like to OC the 2.2 to well 2.5 at least or the 2.4 to 2.7 or so...i dont intend to leave it stock..is the stock heatsink gonna be good enough for that anyway?

just weighing up if the performance jump is gonna be noticeable for the price...*looking for tables now but any advice from people who actually know first hand would be interesting

but first things first...off i go memory hunting!

BloodBath

The a64's aren't the best overclockers even with good hsf's.

Apparantly the 3200's will overclock to the same level as the 3400's but you would have a higher fsb giving your ram extra speed so I would recomend the 3200.

Are the timings the same on the pc3500 and the pc3700?

Don't be too optimistic about your overclock. It's highly unlikely you will get anywhere near 2.7ghz. Most people seem to get around 2.4-2.5 with good hsf's.


BloodBath

ViperVenoM

i havent found the timings for them 2 pairs of ram yet..i was just thinking isnt there a newcastle and a clawhammer chip...1 with 512 and 1 with 1mb of cache...they are clocked at different speeds aint they..am i better getting off a lower clocked 1mb cache 1 or a higher 512k cache..my bartons got 512k ..so to me getting another 512 isnt gonna be that much of a boost is it?

i dunno...obviously..or i wouldnt be asking

btw..buggery AMDs only overclocking a bit...i wanted more of a clock speed than the barton..looks like im gonna struggle..it doesnt seem to be worth it now...

but..i have looked at charts for the 64's vs the xp's..so maybe it is :rolleyes:


just looked for the timings..if ive got the right ones then the pc3500 is:

CL 2.5-3-2-8 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS) 1T

and the pc3700 is:

CL 3-3-2-8*
(CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)
CL 3-2-2-8*
(CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)
at 2.85 volts

so either ive got it wrong or is the pc3500 better..or does this just show i know nothing about memory

Azza

Yeah AMD 64 unless your insanely rich enough to buy an FX chip aren't great for overclocking. With a good heatskin and fan you can about 200mhz extra....you would want a thermalright heatskin and a tornado fan to hit 2.5 Ghz from the 2.2Ghz stock. Thing is you can basically overclock any amd 64 chip up to about the next level in the cpu. Thing with a 3200 clocking it from 2.0ghz to 2.2ghz you will have only half the cache so its not as good. Clocking a 3400 to 3700 speeds (2.2Ghz to 2.4) will match the cache speed also so better value. You will have the higher FSB on the 3400 is it actually is better option overall.

A AMD XP at 3200 speeds will give you in the region of Intel P4 speed 2.6-2.8Ghz at amd 64 3200 will be fater than a 3.2 P4 In games but slower else where (but faster again once 64bit apps are running) a 3400 is around 3.2-3.3 in intel terms. Also a 200Mhz overclock is worth about 300mhz intel. I got mine up to 2.45Ghz and seem to just about out preform a p4 3.6Ghz. Neck and neck but when a 64bit OS appears it will increase its speed in the region of 10-20%. I was using a Zalman heatskin and fan.

As for the OCZ you can pound extra voltage at it will take it to get lower times on the ram.

ViperVenoM

sooo it looks like its the 3400 for me..does that have the 1mb cache then

and whats the BEST cooler for it, your saying thermalright heatsink and a tornado fan...that sounds pretty loud
id like..a bit quiet well no louder than my coolermaster aero7+ at full speed...which i cant remember..is that 3800rpm..dont know how loud exactly though but as long as its under that thats all good, is there any other heatsink/coolers out there or are thermalright and zalman pretty much top?

BloodBath

You don't need a tornado.

Just get a thermalright sp-97 and a 92mm stealth fan with some as5 and your temps will be nice and low.


BloodBath

Azza

I the tornado will give you the best results but other quiter fans will do almost as good and be alot quieter two.

ViperVenoM

ok thx guys..time to count the pennies :eek:

this is getting rather expensive :rolleyes:

BKtje

Just thought i'd throw my experience into the hat.

The a64's aren't the best overclockers even with good hsf's.

Apparantly the 3200's will overclock to the same level as the 3400's but you would have a higher fsb giving your ram extra speed so I would recomend the 3200.

True to a certain extent. I have however gotten an overclock of over 25% which is fairly good. It is ture that i have a vapo but the temperature has only increased by about 10degrees or so. A top of the range air cooler may get you close to 25% but i wouldnt be the person to ask about this really.

As i say to everyone who is thinking of getting an a64. Timings are much more important that bandwidth. I did a 3dmarks 2001 (ok not the be all and end all but a good indication) with 250fsb 1:1 with sommet like 2.5-3-3-8 (lower fsb will allow u to tighten timings more towards its stock) and then with the memory at 210 (same cpu speed) with 2-2-2-5. The 2-2-2-5 blew the 2.5-3-3-10 away by a fair old score. Thats for games i dunno what its like for other stuff.
The highest your gonna get your fsb is about 250 i'd say and thats gonna cost you cpu speed. If your gonna splash out on OCZ abd not really overclock i'd suggest against it. Get pc3200 ram with good timings. The corsair xms3200xl pro/plat will to timings of 2-2-2-5 at stock and if u decide u want more bandwidth it will do 250 at above timings which i posted above with a little extra voltage (which it will easily handle). Its expensive enough tho and may not be for you.

You can by some decent pc3200 ram that will work fine with the little ull be overclocking and still have pretty decent timings. This is what i'd suggest u do.

btw..buggery AMDs only overclocking a bit...i wanted more of a clock speed than the barton..looks like im gonna struggle..it doesnt seem to be worth it now...

As i have said before a newcastle vs barton clock for clock is 10% faster in 32bit apps, theoretically more in 64bit apps. Thw clawhammer will add at least a good bit extra performance to the chip.

ViperVenoM

thanks for more info thats confusing me

one of you say the 3200 will be better where as another of your are saying the 3400 would be better...me not knowing loads would presume the 3400 would be better...but..i dont know

looking for a gb of that corsair ram ive found it for £195 so its no dearer than than the OCZ pc3200 ...so now i dont know, whichever ill buy ill get it wrong

BKtje

lol well.

Right ill try to help ya so any thing thats confusing tell us and we'll explain.

Firstly. The msi k8n neo has a default memory speed of 3200. Unless your gonna overclock by a fair margin there is no point in getting 3500/3700 rated ram. Even if you do plan to go that way id still advise u to get the low latency (timings) corsair ram. It will do the 3500/3700 speeds with decent timings as well as stock (or near stock) with basically the best timings you can get today.
(timings in simple terms is the delay between accessing, reading/writing and being ready for more commands for your ram. Obviously the lower the better. (best available new is 2-2-2-5))

Now to address the 3200/3400 issue.
There are 2 types of a64 chips suibtable for the 754 platform.
These are the newcastle and the clawhammer.

The clawhammer was the original one released. The 3200 clawhammer has a 1mb l2 cache and a 2ghz clock speed. The newcastle (more recently introduced) has an l2 cache of 512k (same as your barton) and a clock speed of 2.2ghz. Now which you prefer is gonan time down to personal preference and what your going to be using the machine for. I prefer the extra l2 cache as i can always overclock that bit extra to get to the newcastle speeds but the choice is yours. ( the extra 512k l2 cach to 1mb is reported to be equivalent to about 150-200mhz which is why its rated the same as the newcastle even tho it has a lower clock speed)

You'll have to see yourself whats more suibtable for you and your pocket.

Is the 195 with or without vat? Best price i seen for em is 180 minus vat (210 with)

All this is probably quite confusing so as i said, feel free to ask us again and again if something doesnt make sense. I dont mind explaining it as ive had it done for me so many times.

ViperVenoM

ok first ill post the link to the £195..then ill edit it ..with other questions

i may have got the wrong ram theres so many damn numbers are it..to me its just pc3200..not all this xl stuff :eek:

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=300699&cks=PRL

dont know if thats with or without VAT but i searched for the model number you posted and that was the cheapest..ok ill post this then look back at your post and add anything

thx for the help btw...ill take any going from all of you actually..i just dont wanna blow like £500 and..for it to be not as good as it could have been :rolleyes:

ViperVenoM

ok well..whats the difference between a64 and my xp now..i know ones 32-bit and the others 64..but when i was reading about overclocking it was talking about it being dependant on the ram..my overclocked pc obviously didnt depend on the ram coz mines crap

but i just ran everything at at 200fsb...changed from 210 so i could run the fan quieter

so im not quite understanding what the ram has to depend on...also this issue about not being dual channelled memory on the s939's where as only s754 is single...ive been informed that the performance isnt much different but..i mean me getting a dual channel kit not to run in dual channel ..seems a bit strange to me, would my current set up be even running in dual channel as i have 2 diff makes and speeds of ram

so the newcastles are 512k l2 cache and the clawhammers are 1mb cache...if im gonna upgrade i may as well get more cache than what i have now..if i can afford it so my choice are...a 2.0ghz and a 2.2ghz...or is there a 2.4..or is that the 3700+ if so forget that theres noway i can afford that..i would probably be better off to get the 3400 and overclock it to 3700 speeds..i think?

oh and 1 more thing for now what is 800MHz Hypertransport interface. ...never heard of that before ...is that the speed the amd is running at or not..as i dont actually know the fsb of these chips or anything..i just got use to my xp

Azza

What the hell my motherboard is acting up I reset the fsb from 240 back to 200 and went I want to raise it again would not boot beyond 220 and I'm losing alot of my rams speed. Just out of note the OCZ EB 3700 will hold timings of 2.5-2-2-8 at 2.8v up to 238fsb which is the ram just a little overclocked.

B-K-DzR do you have a link to bios 1.42?

Azza

As for hypertransport the higher the better but the difference is minimal. You can also over clock it easy. The msi board will go to at least 1000mhz. Not a huge performance increase.

Also there is two version of both the the 3200 and 3400. The ones with the more cache tend to be slightly dear but marginally better.

AMD 64 3200 2.0Ghz with 1mb L2 Cache Clawhammer
AMD 64 3200 2.2Ghz with 512kb L2 Cache Newcastle
AMD 64 3400 2.2Ghz with 1mb L2 Cahce Clawhammer
AMD 64 3400 2.4Ghz with 512kb L2 Cache Newcastle

I would go for clawhammer chips.

ViperVenoM

hmm think its gonna have to be the 3400+ clawhammer then hopefully overclock it to the 3700+ speeds...should waste my barton..i hope

just made a little list up on jes-computer all the little bits im after.....776 euros...ouch.. :eek:

think im gonna have to wait for a bit ....£526...then i guess if i can sell the stuff in my pc now that i wont need forrr hmm i dont know about £120-£150 i dont know how much i can get for them...that takes it under £400...thats still gonna be pushing my budget i think im not sure...but that involves the 3400 clawhammer, the msi board, the corsair 2-2-2-5 ram 2 cooldrive 3's...and the ati silencer..i still wanted a better heatsink and fan...the thermalright one..thats about another £30...

*sobs*

Azza

I don't know how much you expect of improvement in performance for example. If you had previous experience upgrading you might know what to expect. An upgrade I did from an athlon xp 2000 to the amd 64 3400 was a considerable jump in speed.

A freind of mine jumped from less than a 1ghz pentium to a 3.0ghz p4 and was unsatisfied with the performance increase (he does not play games though) but then again his pc seemed badly maintained.

ViperVenoM

my last upgrade..well my last set up...was my secondary rig...just with a gf4 mx440 ..and only 40gb hdd..then i went to the 2500 barton..and overclocked it right away to 3000 speeds..but my case couldnt hack the heat..so i was stuck on that for a bit..till i got the thermaltake and then i could get past 3200 speeds...i dont really do full upgrades often..i usually upgrade whatever needs doing 1 by 1..just u cant really do that with a cpu and motherboard..but i got the barton and asus board last october

oh i have 1 good experience of upgrading..i went from a 9200SE to a 9800xt :eek: ...that was damn fine!

BKtje

i know ones 32-bit and the others 64..but when i was reading about overclocking it was talking about it being dependant on the ram

A64's are a bit more picky about ram as the memory controller is on the cpu instead of on the north bridge. That said it is much more effecient with the ram (quicker) as its on the cpu.

ive been informed that the performance isnt much different but..i mean me getting a dual channel kit not to run in dual channel ..seems a bit strange to me, would my current set up be even running in dual channel as i have 2 diff makes and speeds of ram

No as the memory controller is on the cpu the performance difference seems to be negligable. It does require 2 types of the same ram as it needs to be idtentical i believe.

i would probably be better off to get the 3400 and overclock it to 3700 speeds..i think?

This is a decesion noen of us can make for ya m8

oh and 1 more thing for now what is 800MHz Hypertransport interface.

Im not totaly sure as i havent had much time to read up on it. Once thing i can say is that by lowering the htt multiplyer from x4 to x3 ive managed to get an extra couple hundred mgz outta this machine with little or no performance loss. (at x4 220fs vs x3 220fsb)

From what i understand its there to help clear bottlenecks in the various system busses and therefore speeding everything up.

B-K-DzR do you have a link to bios 1.42?

1.42 is actually the latest official bios. Get it from the relevant section at www.msi.com.tw
Theres a 1.46 beta out which you can get from here

I would go for clawhammer chips.

I'd agree but i still think its a personal preference.

The costing of the machine will have to be yours to hammer out. You could get cheaper ram with still faily tight timings or get half a gig now and half a gig later when u got more funds.

ViperVenoM

hmm dont know if i could bear going back to 512 ram lol the laptop im on..its killing me with only 512...i didnt realise just how fast my pc actually was :eek: but i dont know if its the pentium or the ram but when im extracting stuff on this is waaayyy slower than the main rig

thinking about funds...im just working out im still not entirely sure when my money comes through...im thinking if i gut my pc now (the motherboard ram cpu and heatsink) and try and sell them first ...get however much for them ..ive got £120 sat here...hopefully ..make £130 im not sure what it worth..but thats £250....i know i can spare £300 from my loan..so £550..its all good in theory as that gets me everything....but...hmm...i dont know if i wanna sell mystuff now!! :rolleyes: ..but then that only gives me £420 and i dont see the point of upgrading..to say a 3000 or something as its not gonna be as bigger jump as to a 3400 at 3700 speeds..

just thinking ...cooldrives ...£35 ish for the pair...£20 for the silencer...£80 for the board is it...£200 for the cpu ....a better heatsink..another £30 ....that is like £365...which would leave me £55 for ram....lol i dont think so

so i guess my current stuff has to go!

BKtje

You can always use ur present ram till u get ur other stuff sold.

It will work tho just not optiimally

anyways
bed i go