800 or667

[jimmyj68]

My DP 965 has been sitting in its box for almost a month now. Hoping to avoid the problems I've read about I opted to get some DDR2 800 dimms that are rated at 1.8V. The problem is those two 1 gig sticks cost twice what the motherboard cost! I have 2 gig of DDR2 667 running in my D945 board now - will my E6600 coming next week take a big performance hit if I don't have DDR2 800 dimms?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: jimmyj68
My DP 965 has been sitting in its box for almost a month now. Hoping to avoid the problems I've read about I opted to get some DDR2 800 dimms that are rated at 1.8V. The problem is those two 1 gig sticks cost twice what the motherboard cost! I have 2 gig of DDR2 667 running in my D945 board now - will my E6600 coming next week take a big performance hit if I don't have DDR2 800 dimms?

Depends on brand really. I mean to say that some 667 memory won't go past 800 well and some will do it no problems.

 

[jimmyj68]

My DDR 667 is kingston value ram so I doubt it has much flexibility. I have no interest in overclocking so I assume from what you say that the E6600 will perform at peak with DDR2 800 and less than peak at DDR2667. Is that why you implied an overclock of the DDR 667 toward the 800 level?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: jimmyj68
My DDR 667 is kingston value ram so I doubt it has much flexibility. I have no interest in overclocking so I assume from what you say that the E6600 will perform at peak with DDR2 800 and less than peak at DDR2667. Is that why you implied an overclock of the DDR 667 toward the 800 level?

No, I assume everyone is overclocking. You shouldn't notice any real world differences between the 2.

 

[jimmyj68]

That's a cool answer - cool to the tune of over $300 thanks loads.

 

[Captante]

If you run benchmarks I'm sure the difference will be measurable, but as has already been said I doubt you'll notice much going by the seat of your pants... I havn't tested an Intel system with DDR2 myself, but I can tell you for certain that the performance increase was very small with an AM2 platform... certainly not worth an additional $300!

 

[acegazda]

If you're not overclocking, value RAM is perfect. You won't notice a difference, especially if you aren't overclocking.