Is "high performance" RAM worth it?

D

Delirious

n00b
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Jun 29, 2004
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I've been out of the hardware scene for about a year because of post secondary, used to be hardcore but my knowledge is now lagging, have barely kept up with the news.

Right now I'm running simple Micron DDR266 PC2100 RAM and I'm going to be upgrading my whole box. I have everything set out except the RAM, I have no idea what to get, theres so many choices now, when I bought my box new there was like 3 or 4 main brands with little difference.

I mean whats the real world difference between say OCZ Dual Channel, PC4000, 3700, 3500, 3200, etc? Is it just a pissing contest in benchmarks or will I see REAL FPS gain in games? I don't have unlimited funds... where should I settle? This is going to be in an A64 box btw.
 
Bump!

I'd also like to know which makes more of a difference, good timings or high MHz ratings? I will probably overclock a little but I'm not going to try set any records.
 
Okay, here it goes. PC3200 runs and 400MHz, PC3500 runs at 433 Mhz, Pc3700 runs at 466Mhz, And PC4000 runs at 500Mhz. The only reason you would need anything more than pc3200 is if plan on considerably overclocking the cpu past 400Mhz. The faster the ram, the higher latencies. Many P4's can hit 250 FSB, especially p4c 2.4's. That would be one reason. Now, lets say you're overclocking a mobile barton (athlon xp). You would then probably need nothing more then pc3500, and even then you could probably overlocking pc3200 enough to to not need pc3500. In other words, AMD's do not hit really high FSB's, while intel's do. P4's love the bandwidth associated with high FSB's, but it does not make such a big difference on AMD's, they thrive on low latencies.
Conclusion:
getting a p4 and plan to OC alot? grab some pc3700-pc4000
getting an athlon 64 anf planning to OC? Grab some good pc3200 with low latencies and OC the ram is nessesary.
 
A64 chips like high FSB just like Intel. the more bandwidth the better, since technically the FSB is the CPU speed, technically. ;)
 
amd's do too love high fsbs, just ask all the dfi infinity/lanparty + modded abit nf7 guys like me, I can boot at 250, just that the ram isn't particularly stable with 2-2-2 timings. Granted that the average person won't be running 3.3 volts through their ram, they will require pc3700/pc4000. I know the generalization made by most is that athlon xp's will perform better with better timings rather than higher fsb. Me, I wouldn't know I have both :)

I'd say, the safest bet would be to grab some ram like the new corsair pc3200 xl which will scale up to dd500 with various timings, then you can play around with it to see what performs best.
 
Good value for the money: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=20-146-541&DEPA=0

After a certain point, if you push for the extra percentages in performance, you'll be paying a greater percentage increase of money than the percentage of actual improvement you'll see. It all depends on how YOU value things as to whether it is worth it or not. You're probably making such a huge jump anyways that you'll notice extra cost more than extra performance.
 
Thats what I'm thinking too, my current box includes:

AMD Tbird 1000@1450MHz
Micron 1024MB DDR266 PC2100
Leadtek Geforce 3 Ti500

So it won't take much to blow me away :eek:
Thanks for all the replies, keep em coming

Cardboard Hammer said:
Good value for the money: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=20-146-541&DEPA=0

After a certain point, if you push for the extra percentages in performance, you'll be paying a greater percentage increase of money than the percentage of actual improvement you'll see. It all depends on how YOU value things as to whether it is worth it or not. You're probably making such a huge jump anyways that you'll notice extra cost more than extra performance.
Click to expand...
 
No matter what you end up with, and even though memory compatibility is less and less of an issue, 100% of the time around B.B.S. labs I always insist on new MoBo's / Memory installs running Memtest86+ with all tests enabled, for 24 hours, with no errors. It's not perfect, but it does seem to catch the huge majority of issues before they cause other problems.

FWIW - YMMV - etc..... :cool:

Good luck - B.B.S.
 
i dropped my ram from 2-3-3-6 yesterday to 2-2-2-11 and i didn't notice any difference... how do i test it to see if it made a difference?
 
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