i need a quick ddr speed guide

[DecoY]

it's been a while since i've been reading up on things on computers lately . i got everything down now except DDR ram. i bought a barton 2800+ (333) and asus a7nx. my question is, does it matter what speed ram i buy? 2100/2700/3200 etc. do i need to buy it in pairs? can someone give me a brief cram of this. thanks

 

[Confused]

PC1600 = 200MHz
PC2100 = 266MHz
PC2700 = 333MHz
PC3200 = 400MHz
PC3500 = 417MHz

With a Barton and nforce2 board, you will want the highest speed with lowest timings, so you can overclock the FSB on the nForce2

You will get a small (~5%) increase with dual channel DDR on a nForce2 board that doesn't have an IGP (onboard graphics - yours won't)


Confused

 

[saber800]

Cool. I was wondering also about the Dual Channel stuff and how much I would benefit from adding another stick.

If DecoY isn't going to overclock, you'll be fine with 2700 DDR since it will match the CPUs FSB (both RAM and CPU FSB at 333MHz). 2700 DDR is cheap right now. I got a 512MB Kingston 2700 DDR from Best Buy for $39.99. I'm debating if I should go dual channel or not.

btw, I got a MSI nForce2 Ultra with a 2500+ Barton with that one 512MB Kingston stick and it works great!

 

[DecoY]

args.. i just bought a 2100 stick for my barton 2800+ . i guess it wont do?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: DecoY
args.. i just bought a 2100 stick for my barton 2800+ . i guess it wont do?

You CAN use it, but it would REALLY bottleneck the CPU - you'd have a superfast processor, but it would spend a lot of its time sitting there waiting for more data to show up from the RAM. Give it faster memory, and it'll be able to get new data a lot quicker.