crucial ballistix over patriot extreme

[8ounce]

I am about to order my ram and was stuck on which of these two to choose: crucial ballistic tracer ddr2 8500 1066 and patriot extreme performance 6400 ddr2 800.

Now I know the crucial is the better ram without doubt but its also about 80$ more expensive. I dont mind to pay that if I will see a big performance increase but if the differnce will be very minor then I would rather put that into a better GPU. So how much of a difefrnce will I see.

Also how is the gskill ddr2 6400 800. Itsw priced just a tad over the patriot.

I will be running a
Gigabyte p35 ddr2 board
e6750 cpu
and may overclock a little but nothing crazy.

Thank you for any advice.

 

[JustaGeek]

Minimal difference in performance, and no guarantee that the 1066 memory will actually run at that speed.

Unless you're into pure speed and benchmarking "craziness" like every millisecond of SuperPi, every point in PCMark05 or every MB/s in SANDRA Memory Bandwidth, go with the less expensive DDR2 800, with the timings of 4-4-4-12.

The HZ series from G.Skill is great, the rest is pretty much the same as the competition.

Or get the Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800...

 

[jeffw2767602]

Unless you are running programs that need absolutely need every ounce of performance you can squeeze out of them, go for the crucial ballistix pc6400 2x1gb kit. You can get it for $56 after rebate from Frys.com w/ free shipping. Better yet, grab a kit from Frys and a kit from Newegg for $62 after rebate and you get a grand total of 4gb of great RAM for $118.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Minimal difference in performance, and no guarantee that the 1066 memory will actually run at that speed.

What are you talking about? All RAM is guaranteed by the company that sold it to run at the speed it's advertised to be able to run, at the timings it's advertised to run, as long as the motherboard supports that speed. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that only overclockers need anything faster than PC6400.:laugh:

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Minimal difference in performance, and no guarantee that the 1066 memory will actually run at that speed.

What are you talking about? All RAM is guaranteed by the company that sold it to run at the speed it's advertised to be able to run, at the timings it's advertised to run, as long as the motherboard supports that speed. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that only overclockers need anything faster than PC6400.:laugh:

Well, it is guaranteed by the manufacturer that it was TESTED tu run at 1066MHz.

But, depending on your setup and the motherboard capabilities, you might not be able to reach these speeds.

Many people here at AT posted their complaints about not being able to reach 1066, being limited by the memory voltage settings on their motherboards or some other inexplicable reasons.

Again, it is guaranteed that it was tested and it is capable, not that it will actually run on your setup at that speed.