need help deciding, ddr2 667mhz vs 800mhz ram for gaming

[OmegaShadow]

i have a m2a-vm motherboard which i flashed to 5001 bios and now i run with a athlon ii 440 cpu and powercolour 5770 1gb...

i know my motherboard can only support up to 3gb of phsical ram since my 1gb graphic card is using the remaining 1gb out of 4gb that my motherboard can support.


so i was thinking, how much of a different would there be if i were to use 3GB of 667 ram versus 3GB of 800 ram?

the exact RAM sticks i'm getting is either this for the 667 speed

3x CORSAIR VS1GB667D2 PC2-5300 1GB 5-5-5-15 240pin DIMM


or if i were to use ram sticks at the 800 speed i would purchase the following

3x Kingston ValueRAM KVR800D2N5/1G PC2-6400 1GB DDR2-800 CL5 240PIN DIMM Memory


i game on 1920x1080 24" monitor.

i'd say the most demanding game i'd play in the future would be starcraft 2 and next call of duty that comes out later this year.


ps: i did some researching prior to this and i'm running on a 32bit window xp sp3 OS... that's how i know my computer can only support up to 4gb of ram max.

 

[jaqie]

I would say the difference would barely be noticeable and only in the more intensive games. I personally went with DDR2 800 (8GB) with my core2 duo E3200 2.4GHz which I run at 1333x10.5 (3.5GHz).

Is your motherboard dual channel? if so, make sure to get ram in pairs. It may be worthwhile to get 2x 2gb or 4x 1gb just for the extra ram bandwidth that affords... especially with kingston valueram ddr2 pc800 2x 2gb sticks (what I used) going for $85 right now (for the pair, 4gb total).

 

[Voo]

Absolutely no difference, not even in the most intense games - the only way to distinguish the difference would be some benchmarks or some especially memory intense applications.. games don't fall in that category.

 

[jaqie]

I was speaking of dual channel versus single channel since this person seems to be thinking of getting 3 sticks for what appears to be a two channel system.

 

[OmegaShadow]

yea my motherboard seems to be dual channel according to this link

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/432

This motherboard has four DDR2-DIMM sockets, accepting up to 8 GB of DDR2-400/667/800 memory. Two sockets are yellow and the other two are black. To use dual channel feature you need to install the memory modules on modules with the same color.

so what would happen if i just both the yellow and 1 of the black sockets for my three 1GB sticks?

 

[jaqie]

your mobo would revert to single channel mode and you would notice a slowdown in some games and apps.

 

[jtisgeek]

Why am I the only one that read that he said his video card was taking 1gb of ram!:awe: Your video card memory has nothing to do with what your motherboard supports ram wise.

Also need to look at going to Windows 7 so you can use that 3 core xp only uses 2 so kinda of a waste.

 

[tcsenter]

i know my motherboard can only support up to 3gb of phsical ram since my 1gb graphic card is using the remaining 1gb out of 4gb that my motherboard can support.

No.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

I think the OP is mixing up his 32-bit OS RAM limitations with hardware support limitations (although his hardware might also be limited in actual RAM-size support. As he is using 32-bit XP, he is essentially correct, although described/worded wrong. With XP-32 he is limited to 4 gig of addressable memory, and most motherboards won't even allow the full 4 gig to be used. With a large-size memory video card, it "will" use up addressable memory space so his normally-useable OS RAM will go down compared to using a video card with little memory. He is incorrect though about only wanting to purchase 3 gig of mem instead of 4 for these reasons. OP should be buying 4 gigs, not 3 gig.

Forgot to add, you wont see a lick of difference when actually playing games between the different speeds of RAM. Faster RAM makes a difference for overclocking headroom and benchmarks. If you don't do either, there's no point to going with faster ram for a imperceptably "tiny" difference in real-world game play.

 

[jtisgeek]

The address space is from your motherboard either way has nothing to do with the video card just a lot of older boards couldn't take more than 4gb.

And yes with 32 bit xp it will show up as 3.25 because of the limit.
Am surprised there's still people running xp with these newer systems.