RAM. 512 or 1024?

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Hi!

I'm planning on building my fourth system, but my first OC system.
The components I've decided on are:

ASUS A7V880 mobo (The NF-7 rev 2.0 is way too expensive in Sweden atm)
AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2600+ (45w)
Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu heatsink

Previous components that will go in the system.

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB 256bit
350W power supply
(2x256MB PC2700 RAM Samsung)

I've put the mem-sticks in prev. comp. since I haven't decided whether I can afford to get new RAM or not, I will most likely get new RAM though. Corsair's Value PC3200 cas 2.5 should suit me right?

My question is: Will it be necessary for me to get 1GB of RAM with this setup to avoid memory at 512MB to create a bottleneck in my system, or will I be just fine with 512MB? I'm playing games like Rome: Total War and the upcoming Half-life 2. Other than that I'm using it for the usual day-to-day stuff like internet. Oh, will I have to upgrade my power supply as well?

Greatful for any pointers!

 

[imported_StormGod]

I'm of the opinion that 1GB of RAM is still more than is needed. If you tweak WinXP (read as turning off tons of useless junk) it won't consume more than 80MB of RAM leaving 400ish MB left for lots and lots of apps. Now, if you do photo editing or other super-RAM-intensive things you'll probably want the other 512MB. My advice is buy a *single* stick of 512MB and then down the line when it becomes too little get a second stick. I'm too lazy to check but I don't think that your proposed chipset supports dual channel memory, so you won't see any performance boost by adding the second stick (they are minimal anyway cause AMD's pipeline is much shorter).

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Thanks for that!

I was hoping for that response, and no, I'm not running photo-editing or 3D Studio-style programs. The VIA KT880 chipset on the A7V880 supports Dualchannel DDR though.

 

[RussianSensation]

Even the most intensive game - ie. Doom 3 - shows very little performance advantage having 1 gig over 512mb of ram. Take the money you were thinking of spending on 1 gig and get A64 2800+ and Chaintech VNF3-250 motherboard instead of the components you have. Even getting Sempron 3100+ on socket 754 will give you better performance.

Of course if you overclock AXP 2600+ mobile to 2600mhz, then you are better off. I suggest you get 1 stick of 512mb since XP wont be affected much by dual channel and that gives you room to upgrade later to another 512 ram if need be. This way you can reuse 2 sticks of 512 later on when you decide to upgrade again instead of being stuck with 2 x 256 sticks. I dont know what the price difference over there is, but definately get PC3200 ram over PC2700.

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

Big up to StormGod and Russian Sensation!

I'm getting a stick of 512 PC3200 Corsair Value RAM cas 2.5. That's it!

 

[beatle]

I hope you don't play Call of Duty. My system with 1GB chokes at times when RAM usage tops 1000MB.

 

[blacktankofhopelessness]

No, never play that. Did play it, but got bored with it real quickly so no worries ;-)

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

Originally posted by: beatle
I hope you don't play Call of Duty. My system with 1GB chokes at times when RAM usage tops 1000MB.

holy crap that doesn't seem right. are you running tons of stuff in the background? i play doom with instant messanger, internet explorer, and even a virus scan ruinning in background and it only goes up to like 760 MB

 

[Zebo]

farcry needs 617 mb ram.