Question about RAM: More or Better?

[MattStone]

With RAM prices dropping...I've decided to buy some. Currently my system is a T-Bird 1Ghz, MSI K7T Pro, w/256 megs of pc100 RAM. My question is...should I sell my old ram and buy one 256 meg pc133 stick, or buy another 128. I don't plan on overclocking if you need to know that...thanx.

 

[Noriaki]

if it's good RAM you can probably run the PC100 at 133Mhz...

In Win9x/ME 256MB is plenty so I'd go the faster 256MB route, for Win200Pro I think that 384MB would be nice.

 

[Ulysses]

From what I've read I would guesstimate that if you switched to 256 MB of PC133 CL2 SDRAM @ 133 MHz CL2 (like Mushkin Rev. 1.5 or 2) from what you have now, the benefit in overall performance would be like increasing your CPU speed maybe 10% max if you are running your RAM @ 100 MHz CL3 now, or 5% max if you are running your RAM at 133 MHz CL3. And I think that's a max overall benefit. Only you can judge whether that is worth it.

Depending on what you do with your PC, as Noriaki points out, 256 MB s/be enough with Win 98, but maybe more with Win 2K. Personally I think the high-end RAM is most useful if you're overclocking to an extreme where the memory bus speed is very high.

Now if you need more RAM and don't have a DIMM slot free, well ....

 

[MattStone]

Okay...here is the situation. The RAM I have in now is Crucial, and I'm not overclocking it, nor do I plan to in the future. Are there any kind of benches or anything with ram...I have another slot free, and I'd like to fill it up...but whatever.

what do you guys think...pc133