Ram upgrade Questions

[PaperScissorsStone]

I am looking to purchase a new 3D card and Ram to play Crysis. Processor wise I have an AMD Athlon 64 3800+. I am pretty confident in my 3D card choice... the XFX GeForce 8800GTS 640MB... but I would very much appreciate some help in the Ram department.

I have a A8N32-SLI DELUXE motherboard, unfortunately I can not afford to upgrade this at the moment so I need to purchase Ram which will work with it. I currently have 1G of ram in two 512 slots:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search/?qfind=vs512mb400

Saver Ram.. cant beat it : ) I am hoping to purchase two or four slots of 1G ram. As far as I can tell my motherboard can only support DDR ram, I can find no mention of DDR2 or indeed DDR3 anywhere. Whether this means it will not support it, or whether DDR2 would just run at a reduced rate I do not know.

If my motherboard will support DDR2 and run it at a slower speed, will the increase in speed between DDR and DDR2 on my motherboard be worth the price difference in the Ram... that is one question I would like to put to you guys.

One last question on DDR2, does it physically look identical to DDR, are the slots the same?

I think I am going to have to purchase DDR Ram and I have these in mind, or equivalent:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/...product_specifications

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/...product_specifications

With regards to that Ram, it seems identical to my current Ram just 1G instead of 512. They are both DDR 3200 The only difference I can see is the Latency Timings. My current Ram is CL2.5 and the new stuff I am thinking about getting is CL3.

Could someone please tell me if this makes any difference what so ever as to whether my motherboard will work properly with it? If not then I see no reason why I shouldn?t purchase that. Unless DDR 2 ram does indeed work in my motherboard at enough of a speed boost over this to make the extra money worth while.

Many Thanks

 

[PaperScissorsStone]

I would just like to amend my post, after abit more research I think im going to get a 8800GT card instead, cheaper.. seems better:

XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB
http://www.dabs.com/productvie...de=All&NavigationKey=0

I currently am undecided between a BFG and XFX card, they both seem fine. What manufacturer do you recommend? Im getting alittle side tracked here, this was ment to be a Ram post

Many Thanks

 

[PaperScissorsStone]

Another piece of information has come my way, I have been told from another site that I can only use DDR Ram and that I should only get 2 x 1Gb rather than 4 x 1Gb as having more would impact performance.

Is this the case? I can not see how having more ram would be a negative. If the performance is reduced, surely at that reduced rate 4x1Gb is still faster than 2x1Gb?

Many Thanks

 

[ronopp]

I believe that the command on the memory changes from 1 to 2 if you go to 4 gig of ram. when I built mine(sig i only went with 2 gig because of that and I need a new vid card too!!!

 

[magreen]

I didn't look up your mobo, but are you sure it supports pci-e? It's a ddr board after all. Your 8800GT plans could come crashing down if it's agp.

Ddr2 is physically different than ddr, it will not fit in the ddr slot. It also uses a lot less voltage, so if it did fit in the slot you might get a nice fireworks display.

You might think about upgrading your mobo+cpu+ddr2 instead of investing in ddr (which is more expensive than ddr2 now). Esp. if your board is agp.