DDR2 800 -> 1066?

[GoodRevrnd]

Is there any practical benefit from upgrading to DDR 2 1066 from the 800? My IP35-e has various add-on functions I need failing left and right so I'll be replacing it with a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P.

Q6600
4GB
HD 4890

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: GoodRevrnd
Is there any practical benefit from upgrading to DDR 2 1066 from the 800? My IP35-e has various add-on functions I need failing left and right so I'll be replacing it with a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P.

Q6600
4GB
HD 4890

no

 

[taltamir]

1066 gives on average a little under 1% speed increase over 800mhz of similar timing... this does increase quite significantly with serious overclock (water or phase change cooling levels of overclock) where ram bottlenecks can occur. it also allows you to reach some of the more insane overclocks out there.

 

[boomhower]

not worth it at all.

 

[faxon]

yea it's useful for high overclocks where you dont want low speed ram + dividers to be a limiting factor. i also noticed a significant improvement in performance over the stock 667 kit the computer i have at school uses when running VMs in class vs running the same VMs at home, in situations where i would be limited more by bandwidth than by capacity (512mb per vm vs 3GB is no slouch either). the only real noticed difference will be in high bandwidth server applications and competitive overclocking where having the highest possible ram speed is synonymous with a higher benchmark score, for gaming it really wont make a whole lot of difference. now, considering my favorite kit of DDR2 is a 1066 kit, it costs $58 on newegg, i have 3 of it, and the only noticed problem is a phantom bad bit i havent been able to isolate yet, i would say that saving 5 bucks on DDR2-800 when you are probably overclocking that Q6600 isnt a half bad investment, though much past 9x400 (3.6ghz) isnt so common on air from what i have seen.

 

[imported_Scoop]

You could try and see if your 800Mhz kit can handle ~1066Mhz after loosening the timings a step. My 800Mhz 4-4-4-12 kit is good for around 1100 5-5-5-15, or the first one was. Haven't tested the second one I added later. I'm running 4x1GB now @ 1000Mhz 5-5-5-15.

 

[taltamir]

if you loosen the timings a step to go up a step in mhz you will see virtually NO BENEFIT in speed... for you to see that 1 percent benefit you must increase mhz a step while maintaining the same timings... (or you can improve timing while maintaining mhz...)

Anyways, i wouldn't call it USELESS... while its 1% on average, on some very specific apps it can be more, if you OC your CPU enough it DOES become more (as the mem becomes a bottleneck), and if your hardware is high end enough, 1% improvement for only a few bucks more is not a bad deal compared to the improvement you get going from a 1000 to 1400$ intel CPU.

If the difference is only 5$ between two ram modules for example, then getting the higher end one is usually a good upgrade.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: GoodRevrnd
Is there any practical benefit from upgrading to DDR 2 1066 from the 800? My IP35-e has various add-on functions I need failing left and right so I'll be replacing it with a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P.

Q6600
4GB
HD 4890

For q6600, no. You'd need to hit over 3.6ghz on that chip before your ram will be the limit.
For something like q9550 or chips with lower multi it wouldn't hurt, just luckily the cheap Patriot sticks I have managed to hit 880mhz otherwise i'd be stuck at 3.4ghz.