What RAM do you recomend ?

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Palendrone

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I have just read the Memeory FAQ sticky at the top but still want to be recomended some RAM please :0)

Just wondering if someone could answer this simple (ish) question that I do not know the answer to and hence why I am asking…

RAM? Whats the point spending loads of money of this posh ram ? Not only that but what is all this faster ram about and CAS this that and the other… ?

Basically I have a Abit IC7-G with at present a P4 2.66 533 FSB chip in it and my RAM at the minute is PC2700 333mhz geil ( 2 x 512mb sticks )

I am keeping the mobo but soon am upgrading my CHIP and RAM. My new P4 chip will either be a 3ghz or a 3.2ghz 800FSB with HT. So the question lies what RAM to go for ? Presume a Dual Channel Kit would be a good idea and whats the RAM with flashing lights on it ?

Aaarrrrggggghhhhhhh please help im in a dilemma to what all this means please state what I should buy and don’t really want to go over £200 ( $280 I think that converts to ), obviously the cheaper the better but something that will last the test of time.

My Full spec will be apart from the ram

Pentium 4 @ 3.06Ghz [800FSB] with HT Support
Abit IC7-G Motherboard
PowerColor ATi Radeon 9800XT 256Mb
Maxtor 120GB 7200Rpm HDD running on SATA at 150 speed with 8Mb Cache
RAM ?????????


P.S. I’m not particularly interested in overclocking my PC so if that makes a difference to RAM choice please keep that in mind !!!

Thanks for the help in advance and hopefully from this I will understand something by the end :0)
 
I ordered two sticks of 512megPC3200 Buffalo Technology with Winbond chips for $145.90 shipped from www.tblmemory.com
This is supposed to be damned good stuff. Currently I have 2x512megPC3200 Buffalo Technology with Infineon chips. They are good too but not great for O/C'ing.:)
 
Mushkin lvl 2 is the best memory. Usually about anything with BH-5 chips will perform better then the normal CH-5 you get on most sticks. CH-5 can't run tight timings stable nither can it overclock as well.

The RAM with flashing lights on it is Corsairs pro series. The mushkin lvl 2 is better. And alot of corsairs stuff uses CH-5 chips. About the only thing i can think of from corsair with BH-5 chips is their PC3500 currently.

Your board is very touchy with the kind of RAM it wants to work with and BH-5 works the best. So since your blowing so much on the processor dont skimp on the RAM. And dont buy a 3.2Ghz ither because thats like lighting a hundred dollar bill on fire. Buy a 2.8c or 3.0c instead.

If your not interested in overclocking your machine then why are your looking at overclockers RAM? And why did you buy an overclockers board? Buy something good and cheap if your not going to overclock. The more expensive RAM is for overclockers only :).
 
overclockers board ? is it ? oh well !!! I was recomended to get it on my last visit to my local PC store as the Asus P4SDX board I had was a SiS655 Chipset that was not happy with my new 9800XT so i thought ill have to buy this new board which seems to be good :0)

Basically I aint OC'ing it as if I have a P4 3ghz PC with a 9800XT I figure for now I dont need to OC it but might like to in future... I figure that if i stick with my PC2700 RAM and get a 3 ghz chip 800FSB and HT it will be my current PC2700 RAM that will be slowing / holding back my PC's Potential ( I was told when I got my 2700 ram that my PC would be getting slowed up... )

That is my main concern... So to answer the Q ? Is the RAM PC???? speed higher number much better and will my PC benefit alot from it ie in 3DMark03 etc ?

Thanks
 
Your current processor is only 533FSB so it only requires PC2100 to run at its rated speed. The new 3.0c's however are 800FSB and require PC3200 to run at their default speeds. Anything slower then PC3200 will have to run with a divider and that hurts performance. You can use anything higher though because it will all run at PC3200 as default. So you could buy PC4400 if you wanted to but higher speed RAM has poor latency so PC3500 is the best mix of both worlds. Tigher timings is always better and PC3500 can always outperform the fast PC4400 in gaming and real life performance because games dont use very much bandwidth. Only applications benefit from more raw bandwidth but theres only like a 3% difference even there.
 
More then likely those HyperX sticks you had merlin has Hynix chips and they overclock well but have shit timings. They could be BH-5 also but even if they were you wouldn't want to run 3-4-4-8 at that speed.

You say intel platforms benefit from bandwidth more then timings but thats not true. After you get to a certain speed especially games dont benefit from more bandwidth AT ALL. So PC3500 is more then anyone needs for the best bandwidth/timings ratio. PC3500 in a 5:4 at 250FSB running 2-2-2-5 will always outperform 1:1 with higher bandwidth at the same FSB with looser timings.

It doesn't matter if the Rig is AMD or Intel, your using the same Games and Applications on both systems and Intel systems have twice the amount of bandwidth already available as an AMD because of the effectiveness of the dual channel.

Older 848 chipset boards benefited more from the bandwidth because they didnt' have dual channel.
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
More then likely those HyperX sticks you had merlin has Hynix chips and they overclock well but have shit timings. They could be BH-5 also but even if they were you wouldn't want to run 3-4-4-8 at that speed.

You say intel platforms benefit from bandwidth more then timings but thats not true. After you get to a certain speed especially games dont benefit from more bandwidth AT ALL. So PC3500 is more then anyone needs for the best bandwidth/timings ratio. PC3500 in a 5:4 at 250FSB running 2-2-2-5 will always outperform 1:1 with higher bandwidth at the same FSB with looser timings.

It doesn't matter if the Rig is AMD or Intel, your using the same Games and Applications on both systems and Intel systems have twice the amount of bandwidth already available as an AMD because of the effectiveness of the dual channel.

Older 848 chipset boards benefited more from the bandwidth because they didnt' have dual channel.
Click to expand...

Very informative. Thanks for the heads-up. Learned something new today.:D
 
If you're not overclocking, then get Crucial PC3200 RAM (most stable). As far as an "overclocking motherboard", there is no such thing. You get a motherboard for what features you want it to have; if it ends up being a good overclocking MB, then so be it. This is not a good reason to sway you away from your present MB or suggest another one. Of course, there are MBs that overclock better than others, but no need to worry about this in your MB decision.
 
my apologies Palandrone, didn't fully read your first post carefully =\ didn't realize you had already read the FAQ
 
np carnival forces its just I read alot of stuff on forums and sometimes take things in incorrectly and end up buying the crap end of the market ! The IC7-G was a recomendation from my local PC store and im real happy with it so far :0) much more than my own ASUS choice last year lets put it that way so I thought it might be a good idea to get a few suggestions from you wise folks :0)

Thanks so far folks :0)
 
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