RAM upgrade: mulling my options (More or Faster?)

[schimoth]

to start, here's what i'm running right now:

msi k7t turbo2 mb
384mb pc133 ram
2400+ athlon xp
geforce4 ti4200
40gb dmax plus hdd

in general, i'm pretty happy with things, and until HL2, Doom3, etc, come out i'm in no hurry to make the leap to the dx9 generation video cards; however, i realize at this point the one glaring bottleneck in my system is that antiquated sdram. so, i'm toying with some different upgrade options (in descending order of ambition/price):

1) go all out and get an NForce2 board w/ 512mb of 3200ddr and hope my 2400+ can keep up. i'm looking to stay under $200, thus limiting the amount of memory to under 1 gig.
2) find a nice kt333 or even 266a mb (i like msi, and these can be had for like $30 now) and get some slightly cheaper 2100 or 2700 ram. i'm still probably not going to get a gig and stay below the $200 mark, but it's possible.
3) really go cheap and just get a couple of 512 pc133 sticks for about $70.

so, my question really is, how much of an improvement will i see going over to ddr? and will going all the way to the 400mhz stuff really be worth it considering the cpu i've got? i don't mind switching out my mb, so labor isn't really a factor here, but if i'm spending almost 3 times the money to get a mb and ram combo that would be near the end of their end of the road (with Athlon64 around the corner, i'm looking to go in that direction about this time next year), will i see *significant* results over simply getting more of the cheap sdram? can anyone here speak from their experiences? i know sdram dropped off the radar screen some time ago, but if anyone has some direct sdram vs ddr (preferably one of the newer chipsets) numbers, i'd really appreciate it.

thanks for any input you could give.
tom

 

[BoberFett]

Don't do it! It's not worth it!

Oh, MULLING. I thought were considering a MULLET.

 

[dmw16]

I would imagine a 2400+ should be fine for a while. So i would say option one is best. have you considered overclocking?
-doug

 

[microAmp]

Last I remember there was a 5% to 20% boost going to DDR. But it also depends on the chipset too. The nForce chipset will give those numbers, but a KT266A chipset will be more of 0% to 15% of a boost.

If you really plan on upgrading to a new board/processer next year, it might just be a good idea to extend the life of the SD-RAM, since it will be really cheap.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Hmm.... if you're fine with how fast it runs right now, how about just buying 1 stick of 512MB PC133 SDRAM?

That runs $34 on pricewatch, so from a reliable dealer, you're probably looking at around $40 or $50 shipped. I would do that, because I assume you have a 256MB and a 128MB. If you have 3 slots for RAM, just buy one more stick of 256MB and that should be fine, otherwise if you have two, get a 512MB stick and use your current 256MB DIMM. That should be all you really need if you plan to upgradea few months down the road when HL2 and Doom3 comes out.

If you plan on doing a small upgrade then as in just a video card, get an Nforce2 board and some PC3200 DDR RAM. Personally, I'd chooce the first option of 512MB SDRAM and do a larger upgrade later.