Asus P4PE - Memory Upgrade Delima?

[Froid]

Happy New Years to all of you!

I have an Asus P4PE, an Intel P4 2.4 Northwood 533mhz processor, and 512MB of Micron PC2100 Cas 2.5 memory (2 - 256MB sticks)

I am considering whether to upgrade my memory or not. If I were to upgrade, what do you think would be the best "Bang for the Buck"? And also, please give me your opinion if the new memory would really make a difference?

Option A - Replace my memory with 1 512MB PC2700 Cas 2.5 (Kingston, Samsung, Crucial, ...) (about $ 130.00)
Option B - Replace my memory with 2 512MB PC2700 Cas 2.5 (about $ 260.00)
Option C - Replace my memory with 1 512MB PC2700 Corsair Cas 2 XMS Memory (about $ 180.00)
Option D - Replace my memory with 1 512MB PC3200 Corsair Cas 2 XMS Memory (about $ 180.00)

I don't have an endless supply of money, so I don't want to upgrade just to say that I did it. I am concerned about installing PC3200 due to the limitations of using just 1 memory stick. Hopefully future BIOS upgrades will resolve this issue.

What do you think?

 

[chrislong]

Happy New Year!

What will you be using the computer for? Do you overclock?

I have almost the same rig as you--actually, I have a P4PE with a P4 2.4, and Option D. No overclocking (just doesn't interest me) and it's working very nicely for me. What problems do I risk running into having just the one stick of 3200 on this board? Since they were both the same price, I bought the faster one...seemed like a good deal. Am I limited in what other sticks I can combine the single 512 with, or what?

 

[Viper96720]

Go for the 2 512's if you ever get a dual ddr board you'll have the memory for it.

 

[RayEarth]

best option = B

 

[Froid]

Am I limited in what other sticks I can combine the single 512 with, or what?

Chrislong.... It is my understanding that the Asus P4PE motherboard will only support a single DDR400 (PC3200) chip. This limits the ability to expand the memory past the original 512MB. The motherboard will support two PC2700 memory sticks and that was my delimia.... Buy 1 512MB stick of PC3200 or 2 sticks of PC2700 for a total of 1GB.

 

[naddicott]

Originally posted by: Froid
Chrislong.... It is my understanding that the Asus P4PE motherboard will only support a single DDR400 (PC3200) chip. This limits the ability to expand the memory past the original 512MB. The motherboard will support two PC2700 memory sticks and that was my delimia.... Buy 1 512MB stick of PC3200 or 2 sticks of PC2700 for a total of 1GB.

!?!

Do you mean the sticks themselves won't work? Are you sure it isn't just that you can't run two memory sticks at 400ddr? I'm putting together a system for a friend and was planning on running 2 512MB sticks of corsair XMS 3200 C2 at 333ddr (533fsb). If the sticks themselves would have a problem (as opposed to just agressive settings / mem ratios not being stable) I might as well save him some $ and get 2 PC2700 memory sticks.

My understanding of this stuff is based on Thugsrook's Corsair Shootout. His two 512 sticks crapped out at 352 DDR whereas he could get a single 512 stick to run at 432DDR.

I just want my friend to have good quality RAM for when springdale comes around. Waiting for GB has gotten old...

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

yeah teh mobo only "officially" supports 1 dimm of pc3200
my friend only has a 256stick in his, so i cant test out the theory if 2x256 will not let him select ddr400 for an option...

maybe the option itself dissapears...but when you overclock if you leave it to 333mhz then it goes up on its own accordingly....?

 

[Ketchup]

There is nothing really mysterious about DDR 400 and no options disappear like Voodoo when you try to run it with two sticks. The problem revolves around memory latency. As memory speeds get higher and higher, memory chips have a harder time keeping up with such demanding latency requirements. Latency is in clock cycles, so latency gets lower and lower the faster your memory is. For example, a Cas Latency of 2 at DDR 400 (200 MHz x2 DDR) is shorter than a Cas Latency of 2 at DDR 333 (166 MHz x2 DDR), so if you memory isn't designed to hadle Cas 2 at DDR 400, you will either have to add voltage, reduce your memory timings in the BIOS (increasing cas latency from 2 to 2.5 for example), or buy faster memory.

The reason there is only support for one stick of DDR 400 is also a latency issue. It takes longer for the chipset to address one stick of memory than two, so aparently, Asus has determined that the Intel 845PE can only address one stick of memory when the memory bus is running at 200 MHz. (DDR 400)

 

[naddicott]

Thanks for the explaination ketchup79.

While re-reading a bunch of old 'P4PE' threads here, I saw at least a couple people running "1024 MB of Corsair XMS PC 3200 DDR" on their mobos who were entirely happy with the configuration. They weren't running it at DDR400 though, more like DDR350 range.

I guess it's just a matter of being comfortable manually setting the ratio and timings in bios. For my friend with a 2.4B and 2 x 512 MB PC3200 Corsair Cas 2 XMS I'm going to compare 5:4 @ 140fsb (2.53Ghz, DDR 350) and 1:1 @ 150fsb (2.7 Ghz DDR 300), using 2.5 3 3 7 timings in both cases. Presuming both are stable, we'll leave it on whichever setting appears to perform better. No point in pushing beyond 150fsb for him because he's using the onboard sound and apparently it craps out above 150.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

Originally posted by: naddicott
Thanks for the explaination ketchup79.

While re-reading a bunch of old 'P4PE' threads here, I saw at least a couple people running "1024 MB of Corsair XMS PC 3200 DDR" on their mobos who were entirely happy with the configuration. They weren't running it at DDR400 though, more like DDR350 range.

I guess it's just a matter of being comfortable manually setting the ratio and timings in bios. For my friend with a 2.4B and 2 x 512 MB PC3200 Corsair Cas 2 XMS I'm going to compare 5:4 @ 140fsb (2.53Ghz, DDR 350) and 1:1 @ 150fsb (2.7 Ghz DDR 300), using 2.5 3 3 7 timings in both cases. Presuming both are stable, we'll leave it on whichever setting appears to perform better. No point in pushing beyond 150fsb for him because he's using the onboard sound and apparently it craps out above 150.

you should have no trouble running around 400ddr with fastest timings as thats great ram
go for the highest ram speed you can get, as the p4 is pretty bandwidth hungry