DDR3 - Worth the motherboard upgrade?

[pixelriffic]

I'm looking to upgrade my ram, and it led me to this motherboard issue. I currently have a Gigabyte P35 board that supports DDR2 memory with 4 gig installed. I'd like to go to 8 gigs (running Win8 64) but have discovered that DDR2/800 8gb sets are very expensive, and actually getting hard to find.

I see Frys has a MSI board that supports DDR3 for a good price, and also supports my Q9550 processor. I could buy it and 8gb of DDR3 for almost half of just 8gb of DDR2 ram.

If I had the money, I'd just haul off and get the latest I7 MB combo. I wonder if this is a worthwhile measure for the time being? And if DDR3 would offer any performance benefit with an older Core series processor? Maybe at least I would have memory compatible with modern processors.

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

 

[Eureka]

I would look for used DDR2, they're not quite that expensive in the FS/FT. Are you sure you even need the extra 4GB?

With the cost of new RAM and new motherboard you're halfway to an IB or Haswell combo. Might as well save up.

 

[SPBHM]

your board have 4 slots I think,

you can find 2GB sticks for a reasonable price I think, also if you have 4X1GB,
you could remove 2x and use 6GB or something (2x1 + 2x2),

on my use I'm relatively easily limited by 4GB but almost never close to 8GB, 6GB should be an improvement...

 

[Cerb]

Can you be more specific about the this Fry's mobo, and your RAM? What model, and what price?

At a typical $45-60 for the board, and needing to replace your current RAM (if you are using 4x1GB), you get perilously close to being able to get a brand new (AMD?) CPU+MB+mobo, instead of trying to upgrade with your CPU. With S775, you won't be able to us the cheap 8GB single sticks.

If you are running 2x2GB, definitely add 2x2GB. Given varied densities, 6GB might work, but might not, too. FI, a Crucial pair just got put up for $30, today.

 

[pixelriffic]

Thanks so much for the replies.

Yep, pretty sure I need it. I was running Premiere, and was at 3.5 mb utilized.

There are a couple of possible mboards, and many choices of ram, but I was looking at the following combo.

MSI G41M-P34 Intel G41M 775 Motherboard

PNY 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Dual (2x4GB) Modules MD8192KD3-1600-X9

After $10 rebate, its $110 total. Bit less than half of the 8mb DDR2 kits.

I do have two 2gb sticks installed, and two slots open, but as far as just adding ram, past experiences with mixing have not been great.

Sure, I've considered used. But I have not found any pairs of 2G sticks locally, and I've been watching craigslist quite a while. Only 1gb DDR2 stuff.

Been out of the AMD stuff for a while. Used to be big fan, but they were behind when the Q9550 came out. They any good these days?

Thanks again folks

 

[SPBHM]

if you have 2 slots open it's extremely easy to buy another cheap 2x2GB (look on ebay or something), any other solution makes no sense, and p35 to G41 is a downgrade, also G41 officially only supports up to 4GB of DDR3 (and 8GB of DDR2)

 

[Cerb]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2328254
$30 v. $110. Yes, mixing RAM is always a risk, but that's only $30, and with your current set also being vintage 2GB sticks, it should work.

AMD would be fine for a cheap upgrade, but with a Q9550, you're in that range of slow-for-today, but not so slow that any cheap upgrade will wow you--better to limp along until you can afford something midrange on the latest socket, and/or a big vendor deal on an i5.

 

[Z15CAM]

I'm running Win7 [64] SP1 with 16GB of Samsung MV-3V4G3D-US_DDR3 at 9-9-9-24 1T 1866Mhz 1.5v. I've never used over 3.8GB's of Ram including running Prime95. To use all my Ram I installed a 12GB RAMDisk and run all the System Crap in it to save SSD Writes.

 

[pixelriffic]

Oo. Good point on the DDR3 support. I missed that. Ah well, seemed a bit too easy. Guess I will try another matched pair, and see if the the two sets play nice.

Thanks for the thoughts.