512 or a gig, that is the question...

[lumen]

Well, slowly pieceing my new machine together and a thought crossed my mind, while I am on a budget (who isn't?) If I bought one 512 stick instead of two 256's in a month or two I could buy another stick without much hassle at all. (running an EPoX 8RDA+) but is it worth it?

 

[Lonyo]

RAM prices seem to be dropping, pick up a 512MB stick now, and if they drop you could pick up another soon after. Then again, unless you do lots of A/V editing, you probably don't need 1 gig of RAM. Go for some quality stuff and have 512MB instead (that's what I'm planning on doing, I have 1 gig of poor stuff, on Wednesday a 256MB stick of new stuff should arrive, and if it's any good, I'm returning my 1 gig and going for 512MB of the other stuff (2 x 256 rather than 2 x 512)

 

[Chaotic42]

Personally, I'd stop buying piece by piece. You'll never stop buying. I'd just save up $1500 or so, and get a decent system.

Anyway, I'd spend the money on where the bottlenecks are. If hitting your swap constantly is a problem, I'd get the 512 now. If that isn't enough, then go for 1024. Otherwise, spend the $100 or so you'd save on not getting the second 512, and invest it into getting a better (insert other component) than you had planned.

 

[lumen]

Actually, that's exactly how much I have... I'm only buying piece by piece because it's cheaper to hunt down the deals one at a time.

The point of my question was that since my mobo is dual channel ram, if I go with 2x256, i'm stuck with it because the mobo works best with two modules, alternativly I could buy one 512 module now and get good performance still and really rocket it up with a second 512 module.

So really my question is... is 1024mb of ram worth it? and i am talking high quality ram.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: lumen
Actually, that's exactly how much I have... I'm only buying piece by piece because it's cheaper to hunt down the deals one at a time.

The point of my question was that since my mobo is dual channel ram, if I go with 2x256, i'm stuck with it because the mobo works best with two modules, alternativly I could buy one 512 module now and get good performance still and really rocket it up with a second 512 module.

So really my question is... is 1024mb of ram worth it? and i am talking high quality ram.

if you play BF1942, yes.
i've seen it use about 400-500mb of your RAM on my friend's computer which has 1GB of ram
if you count in the ram that other programs and the OS uses, it think it will use around 700-800mb

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: lumen
Actually, that's exactly how much I have... I'm only buying piece by piece because it's cheaper to hunt down the deals one at a time.

The point of my question was that since my mobo is dual channel ram, if I go with 2x256, i'm stuck with it because the mobo works best with two modules, alternativly I could buy one 512 module now and get good performance still and really rocket it up with a second 512 module.

So really my question is... is 1024mb of ram worth it? and i am talking high quality ram.

I have 768MB, and I really haven't run into any problems.

 

[Snoop]

Originally posted by: lumen
Actually, that's exactly how much I have... I'm only buying piece by piece because it's cheaper to hunt down the deals one at a time.

The point of my question was that since my mobo is dual channel ram, if I go with 2x256, i'm stuck with it because the mobo works best with two modules, alternativly I could buy one 512 module now and get good performance still and really rocket it up with a second 512 module.

So really my question is... is 1024mb of ram worth it? and i am talking high quality ram.

It really should not be a problem to run 3 sticks of 256 with dual-channel enabled, I think most of the boards have resolved the issues or will resolve it soon with bios updates.