Avoiding Bad Memory Help

[laezyre]

I've been looking to upgrade to performance memory from my current 4 gigs of "vista upgrade" memory from ocz. The problem is, I keep reading about how the price wars are causing a flood of low quality memory on othe market. Brands that used to be reliable are now turnig out cheap chips that are DOA, don't perform to specs. or die in a few months.

How can I avoid getting the low quality memory?

I'm looking for 2-4 gigs. I'm using vista 32 bit OS, E8400 cpu, gigabyte p35 ds3l rev. 2.0 mobo, msi 8800 gt OC video card, coolermaster centurion case, 4 gigs of ocz vista upgrade RAM ddr2 800.

Thanks for any help. I appologize if this has been answered before.

 

[DSF]

What's wrong with your current memory?

RAM timings are overrated. If your RAM is keeping you from getting the overclock that you're hoping for, that's a different story.

 

[laezyre]

Perhaps this post was a little premature. My current memory timings are 5-6-6-18 at ddr2 800mhz. I have a vendetta cooler on the way and anticipate the memory being my weak link due to it's loose timings. I am planning on stressing it more once the vendetta is installed. So far it's been my cpu temps that limit the overclock to about 3.4 ghz. I'm hoping to get 3.5-3.6 ghz stable overclock on my system. Thanks for the reply.

 

[DSF]

Any DDR2-800 should allow you to get to 3.6GHz, assuming your chip and motherboard can handle it. The timings really don't have anything to do with that.

 

[laezyre]

It would be nice to not have to buy more memory

 

[BlueAcolyte]

You can't do 5-5-5-18 at least?

 

[laezyre]

The default timings at 800 mhz are 5-6-6-18. I just changed them to 5-5-5-18. My score on 3dmark06 is the same either way. This is a 4 gig pair 2 x 2.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: laezyre
The default timings at 800 mhz are 5-6-6-18. I just changed them to 5-5-5-18. My score on 3dmark06 is the same either way. This is a 4 gig pair 2 x 2.

Like I said, the timings aren't going to make much difference at all.