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more ram or faster ram

P

Prince of Persia

Senior member
I'm upgrading my computer to play World of Warcraft, and currently i'm running 2x256pc2100 on Amd 1.33 Tbird. I'm going to be upgrading to either a sempron or athlon xp (not sure the difference) and was curious if i should upgrade to 2x256 at pc3200(ddr400) or just add another stick to get 768rmb?

Thanks for any input.
 
Well personally I ran WoW Beta great with 768 of pc2700, xp@2.21ghz,9800pro.
I think the extra 768 should offer more performance than 512 at higher speed. 1gb of 3200 would be the best way to go overall though considering future gaming needs.
 
Well with PC2100 RAM you are limited to a 133 FSB, so overclocking is pretty much out of the question on whatever processor you go with. I would buy one 512 stick of PC3200 so you can increase the FSB on your processor as well for overall better performance. When you can afford it, add a second 512 stick.
 
Depends. If you get an AXP from excaliberpc - esp a mobile barton, then you want the 512MB of PC3200, and overclock your barton to 200fsb for huge performance boost.
 
A gb, easily. 512mb of performance ram for current games is like a Civic with stickers all over it and a fartcan exhaust.
 
Originally posted by: Baked
1GB PC3200 will do.
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This is probably the best option, seeing as 1GB is optimal for games now and PC3200 is usually the same price as lower speed grades. You can get one 512MB stick of Mushkin value RAM (2.5-4-4) for about $71. Two sticks (sometimes they're slightly cheaper in the dual packs) from Corsair or Mushkin are generally around $130-150.
 
I played WoW beta, and unless things have changed, you really really need more than 512. I could get by with 512 until I got to a city, then it was a slideshow. Upgraded to 1G and it was fine.
 
I had.. an XP and dual channelling caused huge improvements in gaming performance, I'd do with a slower XP and just get 1 gig 2 x 512 Kingston Value Ram, plays WOW GREAT~~! :
 
Originally posted by: Gurck
A gb, easily. 512mb of performance ram for current games is like a Civic with stickers all over it and a fartcan exhaust.
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Where does the wing fit into this equation? Incidentally, your pup's bone motif kerchief is a menace! What if the l'il fella tries to eat them and gnaws his own head off!? 😉

As for the memory query, it is so oft asked it should be a pop-up on the forums... memory usage is shown in Task Manager under the Performance tab. When the Commit Charge Peak exceeds Physical Total, then paging is necessary. The more oft it occurs the greater the potential for performance degradation. Faster RAM should generally only be considered as an enhancement after having 'nuff capacity.
 
More RAM will always show a more drastic improvement for games that require a lot of RAM. For example, the Sims 2 ate up a lot of RAM on my girlfriend's computer. I swapped her 2x256mb Kingston HyperX PC3000 (2-2-2-11) for a set of 2x512mb generic PC2100 that I had (2.5-3-3-7). That helped a lot.

I noticed the same improvements in Far Cry and UT2k4 when I upgraded from 512 MBs to 1 GB. My other computer has 2x256 MBs, and Half-Life 2 also runs much better and loads faster on my 1 GB machine.

Depends. If you get an AXP from excaliberpc - esp a mobile barton, then you want the 512MB of PC3200, and overclock your barton to 200fsb for huge performance boost.
Click to expand...

What good is a fast CPU when it's limited by long pauses from the hd as the computer eats up all the RAM and is forced to use use the page file?
 
Originally posted by: Prince of Persia
I'm upgrading my computer to play World of Warcraft, and currently i'm running 2x256pc2100 on Amd 1.33 Tbird. I'm going to be upgrading to either a sempron or athlon xp (not sure the difference) and was curious if i should upgrade to 2x256 at pc3200(ddr400) or just add another stick to get 768rmb?

Thanks for any input.
Click to expand...

The main difference is L2 cache (256 vs 512) which makes a difference in performance.

The athlon xp is either a "barton" or "thoroughbred" core, the sempron is a "thoroughbred" or "thorton" core.

Sempron is the value line of AMD processors like the celerons are to Intel. You can think of the sempron as pared down athlon.

Like everyone said you will need faster RAM to keep up with the FSB of the CPU.Tthe higher the FSB the better performance you'll get.




 
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