RDRAM 800 or 1066?

[kp1126]

Is there much performance difference between these two speeds of RDRAM?

 

[SafeZone]

depends if your board supports 1066 rdram and the processor you are running

if you are running a 533mhz fsb p4 (2.4ghz and up) then you will want pc-1066 rdram most definitely

if you are running a 400mhz fsb p4 (up to 2.4ghz) then pc800 will work fine, however pc-1066 will leave you more headroom

as far as performance difference, you're talking roughly a gigabyte more a second of bandwidth, pc-1066 is theoretically rated at 4.2 gb/s or somewhere near there, while pc-800 is around 3.2 or so...

 

[DeviousTrap]

Originally posted by: SafeZone
depends if your board supports 1066 rdram and the processor you are running if you are running a 533mhz fsb p4 (2.4ghz and up) then you will want pc-1066 rdram most definitely if you are running a 400mhz fsb p4 (up to 2.4ghz) then pc800 will work fine, however pc-1066 will leave you more headroom as far as performance difference, you're talking roughly a gigabyte more a second of bandwidth, pc-1066 is theoretically rated at 4.2 gb/s or somewhere near there, while pc-800 is around 3.2 or so...

Yes safeone if right except you should use PC1066 on a 2.26 not 2.4 and up

 

[HokieESM]

The numbers the above posters mentioned are indeed correct. The big question is: will you use the memory bandwidth? If you do things that require a lot of floating point calcuations, my guess is yes. So if you do any numerical modelling (I have a P4 2.26 with 1 GB of PC1066 for my number-cruncher).... or play any FPS games, you might want to spend the extra $$ for the PC1066. The P4 responds REALLY well to the additional bandwidth.

Best of luck!

 

[kp1126]

Thanks for the responses.

This is for a 8250 p4 2.5 533mHZ from that Dell deal. Its about a $40 difference when buying 2 128mb sticks.

So the bandwidth is about 1GB less, will I notice for regular surfing and MS Office? Will this severely restrict anything?

If I'm running 2 128mb sticks of 1066 now, can I even add 800 chips? I know that the pairs have to match, but do all four slots have to have the same type of RAM?

 

[mrman3k]

RDRAM1066 is a bit faster than PC800, so it is your choice on how much extra does the cost warrant the upgrade.

 

[tapir]

IF you buy a computer that supports 1066, you should buy 1066 IMO as it will be a significant upgrade at a reasonable cost. You can't use 800 and 1066 at the same time - well, you can, but it'll be the same as using only 800.

However if you're not going to do any gaming, DV editing or anything CPU/bandwidth intensive even PC800 is more than you need. There's not even that large of a difference between a P3 1GHz and a P4 2GHz if all you're doing is running Office.

 

[kp1126]

Heh, no kidding, just couldn't resist the deal.