asking upgrade advice

[bjack]

Ok right now I have an abit ns7 w/ 2500 barton and an AGP 6800GT. So I would be going with the ASrock board. In my current system i have mushkin pc3200 512mbx2 green pack in dual channel and a stick of 3200 patriot in the other slot. (1.5 gb ram total)

What ram do I need to buy with the new mobo? Would love to use as much as I could but I heard that running more than 2 sticks of ram kills your bandwidth? Is this true or am I on crack? Would buying another mushkin green pack 512x2 for 2gb total be ok?

I don't care about overclocking.

For cpu, considering either 3500 or 3800 venice... care to sell me on which one?

 

[OvErHeAtInG]

running 4 sticks should be ok. If they're the same model, that would be the most ideal.

For the CPU - not sure which is the better deal....

 

[Navid]

You will be better off if your CPU does not need an FSB greater than 274 in case you overclock.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I agree with both of the above. Buying another set of 2x512MB to add to what you've already got will work fine, you'll get 2GB in dual channel, and the only performance hit is a drop to 2T command rate (generally accepted as less than 3-4% in real-world usage). I'm running 4x512MB myself, and not even the same type/model of RAM either (though both the pairs are the same brand). If you tried to run three sticks of RAM (instead of four), you would not be able to run dual channel, and this might drop you 5-10% performance, possibly less (it's been a while since I looked at numbers for that).

If you have no interest in overclocking at all, either CPU would be fine. I'd just recommend the cheaper one (though I don't know how much more expensive a 3800+ single core is than a 3500+ these days). Even if you did want to overclock in the future, the 3500+ is 2.2GHz (IIRC), meaning a 11x multiplier, so you'd be fine there (for staying under 274MHz HTT).

 

[bjack]

Thanks to all you guys for the replies. Just put my order in and decided to go with the 3500 venice.