Does RAM Speed make a big noticable difference?

[niwi7]

Im thinking about upgrading my computer with a MSi Delta-L (i think thats the name) MB and a athlon 2600+ proccesor

rite now i have a single chip of 512 DDR RAM PC2100


if i were to buy either 2 chips of 256 DDR RAM 3200 or 1 chip of 512...

would this greatly increase performance? would having hte 2100 greatly DECREASE performance? thanks

 

[AtomicDude512]

It depends, if your processor has a 266FSB then it probably wont make a difference processor wise. All my DMA and UDMA devices worked faster when I put in faster memory, just the processor still had the slow bus and could not take advantage of it.

If you have a 2600 with the 333MHz bus then I would say definantly get the faster memory, the unused bandwidth will still help with DMA devices like I said above.

MSI-Delta L is Dual-Channel right? That being so I would get two sticks to get Dual-Channel bandwidth. And yes, you probably would see less performance with the same old PC2100 and a 266FSB processor.

Hope this helps... 🙂

 

[Regs]

An Example of a DMA or UDMA device would be? Please? :/

 

[Budmantom]

I don't think you will see much of an improvement, perhaps a bit but not much.

 

[jazzhound]

Originally posted by: Regs
An Example of a DMA or UDMA device would be? Please? :/

 

[jazzhound]

Originally posted by: jazzhound

Originally posted by: Regs
An Example of a DMA or UDMA device would be? Please? :/

Harddrive.

Sorry for double post.

BTW, I've noticed some performance hike in general from going 1800xp palomino with 1GB of pc2100 to 2600 w/333fsb with 512 pc3200.

only slightly; though the processor is the big catalyst for the boost.

 

[BaboonGuy]

ram timings definetly make a difference. before i had to run "fast" for my timings in the bios, things loaded a lot slower and stuff, then i got new ram and upgraded to 5-2-2-2 and now everything flies

 

[Davegod]

as said it can depend on the fsb of the processor. not counting that, you'll probably only notice in memory intensive applications, but there could be a very noticable difference in those.

 

[niwi7]

so in other words its defintaley not worth dishing out an extra 100 bucks


ill just stick with the older ram with the new components

maybe in future i will upgrade...thanks every1