Ram

elexes

looking to buy new ram was about to buy some stuff Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC-4000 from overclockers then decided to wait and see what everyone was using and how good it was ?

basicly i have 1 gb of ddr 3200 atm with not so good ram timings . im looking to upgrade the general speed of the system so as well as the ram ill be adding x 36gb raptors to make a nice 4 disk raid array .

so how good is the above ram ? or what ram would be better ?

BabyEater

I dont see the point in getting better ram unless it is holding back an overclock as you wont notice any difference in speed if you are only going to improve your timings. Only in benchmarks will you notice any difference. I would spend the money on something else.

Thordon

If youre looking to upgrade HD/ram timings for better speed you can probably already run all new games at full speed anyway, if not, look at GFX/CPU

neokenzo

IMO the best ram you can get at the moment is 1Gb DDR PC3200 OCZ Gold EL VX Voltage eXtreme Dual Channel kit from http://www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk. I have seen it goes up to 270-280 no problems. Also, OCZ warrantly allows you to go up to 3.2V

gline

Now this is the ram u need


http://www.gskill.com/pc4800-pc3200-tccd-2-3-3-6-dc.html


Does PC4800(DDR600) 3-4-4-8 and PC3200 2-3-3-6 (Dual channel)


NICE

po0k

Ian, point-of-info:

LEDs on ram looks uber-ghey. Don't turn into a Mod-Boii

And timings make sod-all difference past 3-3-3 @ 200Mhz FSB/CoreMem, particularly on an A64 system.

Look at getting more Ram/Dual-Channeling it or get a proper RAID card.
Onboard raid sucks major ass, regardless of what the pe0ns say.

Go Raid5 or Raid10

astrofool

timings actually do make a diff on an a64 system, its intel systems that they don't really affect, intel systems prefer higher speed ram at relaxed timings, a64 gets more performance at stock and tighter timings.

EITHER way, the difference is less than 2%, so its not really worth replacing your ram, unless you sold the old ram for the price you bought it at (is €60 diff in price worth 2% more performance ?).

On the other hand, I have corsair on 2-2-2 at 1T, and its very fast on my a64

Archytas

Sorry bout the question in someone elses thread....

But building my own sys at the mo and have to make some decisions on RAM. Bought a AMD64 3500+ for my new motherboard... nForce3. So want to ask some dumb questions...

1. Was gonna buy 1024mb of corsair 2-2-2-6 beautiful RAM but had a thought after readin some threads... apparently 2% gain from the lower latency isn't worth the money? should I go with the higher latency for less money?

2. Maybe I should buy an extra 512mb ram with the extra money? maybe a dual 256?? Am I an idiot?

3. Also theres that thing with AMD and the nForce3 with the faster read and right to dual Ram? Cant remember what its called.... if I have 3 thingys of ram will it still do the quick thing on the double set?

Sorry about the confused questions.. Ive been starin at a screen programmin servlets all day?????? Any help, advice, etc?

po0k

Archytas wrote:

Sorry bout the question in someone elses thread....

But building my own sys at the mo and have to make some decisions on RAM. Bought a AMD64 3500+ for my new motherboard... nForce3. So want to ask some dumb questions...

1. Was gonna buy 1024mb of corsair 2-2-2-6 beautiful RAM but had a thought after readin some threads... apparently 2% gain from the lower latency isn't worth the money? should I go with the higher latency for less money?

2. Maybe I should buy an extra 512mb ram with the extra money? maybe a dual 256?? Am I an idiot?

3. Also theres that thing with AMD and the nForce3 with the faster read and right to dual Ram? Cant remember what its called.... if I have 3 thingys of ram will it still do the quick thing on the double set?

Sorry about the confused questions.. Ive been starin at a screen programmin servlets all day?????? Any help, advice, etc?

1. 2% gain in performance should be equal to 2% increase in price. If the incease in price is much more than that, then imho it's not worth it.
The ultra expensive flashy ram is for the mod-boiis with píss-poor uptime on their machines.

2. This depends on 3. below, but in my opinion, get one stick of solid 1024Meg with good timings, and buy a second matching stick in 3 months or so. 2Gig of PC3200 in Dual-channel with nice timings should see you sorted for ram for at least a year and still leaves you with some room to increase later.
I forget how many slots are on NF3 boards.
Also, Dual-channel is only really effective on Socket 939/940 boards (for AMD). Socket 754 chips won't take advantage of it.
That said, if you have 4 slots on the board, you could get 2x512Meg sticks now, and 2x 1024 in 6-9months time.
Also, I wouldn't recommend going over 3.5Gigs of ram in a *normal* machine as it can lead to some address-space allocation probelsm, particularly for AGP .

3. If I understand your question correctly, it's called Dual Channel, essentially interleaves the banks to give double the bandwidth.
You can't do dual channel with 3 sticks of ram. It must be an even number, with ram paired, much like EDO ram was paired on the pentums (which was pretty much an example of early dual-channel).

Archytas

Cheers SyxPak.. Just to clear somethin up.... The Dual Channell thing.. will it work if Ive got two 512 and two 256..... I think it will from the readin iv been doin but do you know for sure?

Thanks!

po0k

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't, unless you put the wrong sticks in the wrong slots ie, each dual-channel "bank" as a 256 and a 512meg stick.

In any case, RTFM

tman

meh. mine is set to dual channel and i've only got a stick of 512 and a stick of 256...

elexes

SyxPak wrote:

Go Raid5 or Raid10

ive been looking at different raid setups but raid 5 gives excelent backup and considering that ill only be using the raid on a gaming machine i dont need the backup . never looked at raid 10 tho . worth a google me thinks .