old cpu/ram

[The Alias]

hey guys I have an old prebuilt pc that has an athlon x2 4400+ (2.3ghz) and 2gb of ddr2 400 ram I was wondering if I replaced the ram with like drr2 800 speed ram would I experience an increase in speed (like in games that stress my cpu more than my gpu)?

 

[Smoove910]

well, if it truly takes DDR2, I would try to look for a CPU/RAM/MOBO upgrade. Reason I say this is because DDR2 is quite expensive compared to DDR3, so for 8 gb of DDR2, you are looking around $100. You could probably upgrade CPU/RAM/Mobo for around $150.

 

[The Alias]

well, if it truly takes DDR2, I would try to look for a CPU/RAM/MOBO upgrade. Reason I say this is because DDR2 is quite expensive compared to DDR3, so for 8 gb of DDR2, you are looking around $100. You could probably upgrade CPU/RAM/Mobo for around $150.

I already have another pc . The most I was even considering was $25 to replace the old ram with 2 gb of new stuff . I was just wondering if you guys thought it would produce any net gain by upping the ram speed

 

[Denithor]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1756/4

Well, to directly answer your question, maybe. If your given applications are bandwidth constrained then yes, you should see a nice improvement by upgrading to DDR2-800 (or higher) memory speed. If not (as in the second table on that page I linked) then you are unlikely to see any improvement at all.

These days you can pick up 2x1GB DDR2-800 used on eBay for around $10-15 and I recently nabbed 2x2GB DDR2-800 sticks for $30.

Or, as mentioned above, you could replace CPU/RAM/mobo with a Celeron/4GB/H61 setup for around $100 (newegg). This would give you considerably better performance and significantly reduced power consumption. Keep in mind that going this route can be tricky as the version of Windows is likely tied to the OEM motherboard so you might have issues getting Windows to boot on the new motherboard and then would almost certainly have to call them to reactivate.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I already have another pc . The most I was even considering was $25 to replace the old ram with 2 gb of new stuff . I was just wondering if you guys thought it would produce any net gain by upping the ram speed

Since you have a new computer. I wouldn't waste money on an old computer.

 

[Hubb1e]

Switching out the RAM for faster RAM will have negligible performance gains. 5% maybe which is not noticeable in daily activity. I have a hard time believing you are even running DDR400 since it wasn't really sold off the shelf. Slowest DDR2 normally available was 533. I'm gonna bet that you already have DDR2 800 and you're looking at CPU-Z and it reads as operating at 400mhz so you assume that's DDR2 400. DDR2 is called 'Double Data Rate' and is named as double the operating frequency. So, your DDR2 at 400mhz is actually DDR2 800 already.

You could drop in more memory and that might help speed up your system if you are running low on RAM, but you won't get any appreciable performance gain in going from 400 to 800 if you do have DDR2 400.

 

[Maximilian]

hey guys I have an old prebuilt pc that has an athlon x2 4400+ (2.3ghz) and 2gb of ddr2 400 ram I was wondering if I replaced the ram with like drr2 800 speed ram would I experience an increase in speed (like in games that stress my cpu more than my gpu)?

No.

 

[mikeymikec]

2x 1GB DDR2-800 shouldn't set you back much, so you may consider it to be worth a gamble. What OS are you running?

In my experience DDR2-400 is pretty rare. Have (and how have you) you confirmed that is actually what it is?

 

[jihe]

I already have another pc . The most I was even considering was $25 to replace the old ram with 2 gb of new stuff . I was just wondering if you guys thought it would produce any net gain by upping the ram speed

No.