DDR3 Advice

H

HotBBQ

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
131
I need recommendations for purchasing DDR3 memory. I'm replacing a system pushing four years old so my budget has some room since I don't upgrades often, but I'd like to keep the memory cost around the mid $400 range. I'd like 4GB and decent timings. I plan on using the ASUS P5E3 Premium and a Q9450 as the system base. The board seems to be the only one that can reliably handle 4x1 memory overclocks. I've never overclocked before so I don't plan on doing serious overclocking, maybe a 400Mhz FSB. Will DDR3-1333 suffice or will DDR3-1600 be more to suite?
 
I posted a thread in this forum recently with the same question and most of the responses were pretty disappointing. I got financial advice, which made my question the users on this forum, because this is a enthusiasts forum. Anyhow, the best price I found was at ClubIT.com:

http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4354083

That's the kit I went with. Not the highest end, but it's not an astronomical price either. I opted to go with the P5E3 Deluxe AP/Wifi because I got one used but like new for $199.
 
Its hard to beat a nice DDR2 platform with the current prices.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant for the OP... but so true!

Anyway, the Patriot Viper 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 kit is pretty good and the price is hard to beat (for DDR3...).
 
unixadm said:
I posted a thread in this forum recently with the same question and most of the responses were pretty disappointing. I got financial advice, which made my question the users on this forum, because this is a enthusiasts forum. Anyhow, the best price I found was at ClubIT.com:

http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4354083

That's the kit I went with. Not the highest end, but it's not an astronomical price either. I opted to go with the P5E3 Deluxe AP/Wifi because I got one used but like new for $199.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I saw this set of Corsair DDR3-1333 for $296 after MIR. That's pretty cheap for DDR3. The timings are a little loose, but I might be able to tweak them some.

Did you try over clocking them at all?
 
That was the kit I was going to get, but I did not like the timings. I felt I had more wiggle room with headroom in going with the tighter timing Patriots, then loosening the timings if I needed a higher OC.
 
would you go with the gskill ddr3-1600 that has 7-7-7-18 timings for 499.99 or for 380 go with the corsair ddr3-1600 that has 9-9-9-20 timings??
 
AthlonXP said:
would you go with the gskill ddr3-1600 that has 7-7-7-18 timings for 499.99 or for 380 go with the corsair ddr3-1600 that has 9-9-9-20 timings??
Click to expand...

Honestly, I wouldn't go for DDR3-1600 at the moment. IMO the price difference is not worth it. You should be able to get most DDR3-1333 modules to overclock to 1600. If you must have 1600, there are much better deals to be had. This OCZ Enhanced Bandwidth Platinum set has 7-6-6-24 timings for $255. You can get the non-Enhanced version at 7-7-7-20 timings for $210 after MIR.
 
unixadm said:
I posted a thread in this forum recently with the same question and most of the responses were pretty disappointing. I got financial advice, which made my question the users on this forum, because this is a enthusiasts forum.
Click to expand...

Well, enthusiast doesn't necessarily mean that you can't think that something isn't worth the money, or have a budget. Otherwise everyone would have dual QX9775 processors on Skulltrail* with SLI 8800 Ultras - most come to a point where the cost is too high for the benefit. I can appreciate the point both ways though; if you have your heart set on DDR3 RAM and don't mind paying then you don't want to be told not to buy it because it's not worth the money, but it might nevertheless be good advice.

(* Okay, maybe the performance of Skulltrail isn't the best ever. Still.)
 
how much do you plan to overclock? are you trying to get some impressive results? at a budget? unless youre goin 64bit, you wont need 4gb, i personally think DDR3 money could be spent elseware, but at least get a dual channel kit.
 
Brian@EWIZ said:
how much do you plan to overclock? are you trying to get some impressive results? at a budget? unless youre goin 64bit, you wont need 4gb, i personally think DDR3 money could be spent elseware, but at least get a dual channel kit.
Click to expand...

I do plan on overclocking. Not to extreme levels, but as fast as I can get and still be rock solid. I'm not really on a tight budget for this build. I do plan on using 64bit Vista and Linux.
 
im just throwing this out there but you might get a quicker system feel with 2x 10k raptors in a striped raid array, but if you got the cashes for ddr3 go for it, it is basically speed equivalent to ddr2 (unlike ddr1) so 2000 mhz ddr3 is like 2000mhz ddr2 :)
I think the real problem is that the core 2 duo does not have an integrated memory controller so you are limited by the north bridge, but that may change here soon (if you have the ddr3 then than :) )
so price/performance is small but you do get a edge even if its small

but really 4gb for 300$ AR?... reminds me of rdram I would personally put the extra 200 now into a terabyte storage drive
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top