How much extra speed out of better RAM?

[imported_trajan]

Sorry for such a newbish question, but I am a certified noob Anyone's help is greatly appreciated!

I've got an ASUS P5W mobo and an E6600 running XP. Am not currently OCing it although I probably will go back to doing that soon-- I don't have a great heat sink yet, so I don't push it very far I've got a great video card, 7950GX2, but then my RAM is only 667mhz (2gb).

I saw a great deal (?) for two OCZ 1gb PC-8500 1066MHz RAM, $140 after $30 MIR... should I go for this? (see ******for the deal if you're interested). I'm willing to spend the money if it will give me a decent improvement in speed, but is faster RAM going to make that much of a difference? I'm mostly curious about with gaming, but also interested in just day to day applications (word, explorer, etc.).

Any insights?

[I know upgrading the heatsink is probably the better/cheaper thing to do, but I'm tired of taking my comp apart and putting it back together for the moment -- I will get a better HS in another month].

 

[myocardia]

Even if the RAM you have now won't overclock a single Mhz, it will still get you to 3.0 Ghz. And most PC5400 RAM will do 400 FSB/800 DDR, once the timings have been raised.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Definately not worth it if your not overclocking, just use the appropriate memory multi to run it a 667mhz. And like myo says you should test the overclockability of your ddr667 before thinking about upgrading it, even if you are going to overclock. Most ddr667 will overclock to ddr800 pretty easily which would give you the ability to go up to 9x400=3600

 

[xsilver]

is there a shortlist of recommended 667mhz ram and 800mhz ram at the moment? in the $100-150 price bracket I guess. (cas4 possible @ this price?)

 

[Lemon law]

In 32 bit xp I think there is a limit on how much ram it can see---something like 2.4 gig---and going to 4gb will probably force all the ram to downclock on most mobo's.

Nor does xp use ram efficiently---but Vista is much better at using extra ram---I would want some compelling reason and more pre-knowledge about what is bottlenecking your system
before letting 1.5 Cbucks burn a hole in your pocket.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: trajan
Sorry for such a newbish question, but I am a certified noob Anyone's help is greatly appreciated!

I've got an ASUS P5W mobo and an E6600 running XP. Am not currently OCing it although I probably will go back to doing that soon-- I don't have a great heat sink yet, so I don't push it very far I've got a great video card, 7950GX2, but then my RAM is only 667mhz (2gb).

I saw a great deal (?) for two OCZ 1gb PC-8500 1066MHz RAM, $140 after $30 MIR... should I go for this? (see ******for the deal if you're interested). I'm willing to spend the money if it will give me a decent improvement in speed, but is faster RAM going to make that much of a difference? I'm mostly curious about with gaming, but also interested in just day to day applications (word, explorer, etc.).

Any insights?

[I know upgrading the heatsink is probably the better/cheaper thing to do, but I'm tired of taking my comp apart and putting it back together for the moment -- I will get a better HS in another month].

Faster RAM on a C2D makes almost no difference in system performance. It only gives more headroom to OC, which you don't need.