RAM type help, please

[Emultra]

I'm going for the Anandtech November gaming guide stuff.

For the Abit AV8 (939) mobo and the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8 GHz (939) 90 nm CPU, what RAM type should I get? DDR, DDR2, PC3200, 400Mhz bus, I don't now much about this stuff.

 

[ts3433]

As with all A64s, you'll want PC3200 (DDR400, 200MHz) DDR. Go for value RAM from a good manufacturer (Corsair/Crucial/Mushkin). You can get higher rated speeds or really low latencies to overclock the RAM, but that's unnecessary (see the sticky in this section of the forum).

On a side note, you can probably get something better than an AV8 in a similar price range.

 

[Emultra]

Why not 400Mhz? It's available.

Yes, the guide is from November. What would you suggest in place of the AV8?

 

[Relion]

Some nforce4 ultra or nforce4 sli mobo...currently not many but there will be enough in a few...

 

[ts3433]

400MHz as in DDR800/PC6400? I don't even think that exists... you're probably confusing "400MHz" with DDR400, which actually operates at 200MHz. You don't want DDR200.

Instead of the AV8, I'd probably take an Epox EP-9NDA3+ or MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (maybe an Asus A8V Deluxe or Soltek SL-K8TPro-939, but those are VIA chipsets like the AV8, which are generally considered a bit inferior to nVidia's offerings), or wait for some NF4s if you're that patient and really anxious to get PCIe.

 

[Emultra]

I need to get it ASAP, so I don't think PCIe is something to shoot for this time.

Weird, it says 400Mhz...well, whatever. I'll go with the DDR400. Does the "400" in DDR400 replace the "PC3200" naming convention?
Should I just simply select a Crucial or whatever DDR400-something and not think so much about it? What about the 2.5, 2.0 and 2-4-4 and such figures I see?


MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
So this one would be good with the rest of the setup? I'll take note on that. Thanks.

 

[ts3433]

DDR400 = PC3200 = 200MHz. They're used pretty much interchangeably. To get the DDR rating, double the MHz speed. To get the PC rating, multiply the MHz speed by 8. Figures like 2.5-3-3-8 are RAM timings. Lower is better, but this provides a theoretical advantage at best. Don't waste your money, and opt for the CL2.5 or CL3 value RAM. (CL = CAS latency, the first and most important of the timing numbers.) The exception is if you're overclocking a P4 and you need good overclocking RAM (running a divider kills performance on those), where 2-2-2-5 @ PC3200 guarantees you good overclocking chips.

 

[Emultra]

I will be running an Athlon64 socket 939.