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Ready For RAM

R

rip

Senior member
Your input is welcome 🙂
I enjoy overclocking occasionally for something to do but always clock back down to safe and stable speeds. I play games (NASCAR 2k3 and Oblivion mostly) and do photo editing and sound recording. I'm finishing up a 'new' rig made with budget parts and I'm stuck in the "What RAM do I get?" void.

What I have: I'll be running Vista Home Premium on an AM2 3800 X2 w/Arctic Freezer 64 Pro; MSI K9N SLI Platinum; eVGA 7900GS; 300GB SATA II HDD...

My main questions are: How little can I get away with on RAM? I'd like 2GB. How much do I lose with ddr2 533 vs ddr2 667 vs. ddr2 800. The price differential is fairly big. Is the performance? Where is my bottleneck? Or, are the components I have fairly balanced? How much do I lose with 'Value' RAM over say, Firesticks or something similar? What would you do at this point???
 
I'd never personally go with less than 1GB of RAM, even with Windows XP. Or are you wondering if 2GB will be be enough, or if you should go with more?
 
2 GB is what I'm getting. My main concern is am I crippling my whole setup getting 'value' ddr2 667 vs. mid-range 667 or 800
 
Well, assuming you'll be overclocking, you'd probably be right, if it weren't an Athlon 64. But since it is, you don't have to run the RAM at the same speed as the cpu's HTT, so it won't even hurt your overclock. Sure, you'll lose a bit of performance, but you could also put the money you've saved into a better video card, and gain alot of performance, if you're a gamer.
 
rip, just get some of that Super Talent stuff over at . . . eWiz I think? It's cheap and OCs to DDR2-800/900 speeds easily. You'll be fine.
 
From what I have noticed is that if you have 2gb of ddr2 533 and ddr2 800, unless you are benchmarking you really won't notice the difference between the two. And as far as gaming goes, and correct me if i'm wrong, its not so much the tight timings ( though bandwidth will help) that make it, it is the ammount. IMO, you won't see any difference between the two for that system.
 
2x1GB DIMMs sold as a matched pair is best for most boards. That way you're not using more than 2 DIMMs, you're using a pair that are as identical as possible, and you'll be able to use dual-channel if the board offers that feature.
As far as speed, no reason to get less than ddr2 800 these days unles you're just building the ultimate budget rig, in which case 533 or 667 is cheaper.
 
If you get the right cheap RAM, it will OC to DDR2-800 most of the time anyway (such as the Super Talent stuff I mentioned).
 
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