Running X2 3800 with DDR 333?

[buildingacomputer]

I want to go from Athlon XP to X2 3800. I have DDR333 RAM. If I put 939 X2 3800 with DDR333, will it be a waste? Thanks.

 

[akshayt]

No it shouldn't be a waste. But I strongly advise you to go for DDR 400 or even 500+ modules. Anything over 400 will help you in ocing and also give a slight performance boost. On the other hand anything below 400 may decrease your performance to a certain extent.

 

[shamans]

If any of the following occurs...
a) you're not satisfied with the performance
b) you don't have enough memory to work with.


Otherwise, no point really.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: buildingacomputer
I want to go from Athlon XP to X2 3800. I have DDR333 RAM. If I put 939 X2 3800 with DDR333, will it be a waste? Thanks.

I'll be fine.

The difference between 333 & 400 isn't all that large actually.

Unless you benchmark, you'll never even see the difference.

I'd say spend the money saved on a better video card, etc.

 

[NewBlackDak]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: buildingacomputer
I want to go from Athlon XP to X2 3800. I have DDR333 RAM. If I put 939 X2 3800 with DDR333, will it be a waste? Thanks.

I'll be fine.

The difference between 333 & 400 isn't all that large actually.

Unless you benchmark, you'll never even see the difference.

I'd say spend the money saved on a better video card, etc.

Games that are CPU bound do show the difference, and compiling shows a difference.
With most useage you won't even notice.

 

[buildingacomputer]

Thank you for the replies.

 

[myocardia]

Yeah, don't let not having PC33200 RAM keep you from building a Socket 939 system. It is going to effect your performance some, and especially if you overclock it. I'd personally just buy the new system, and then buy some PC3200 or better yet, PC4000 RAM as soon as possible, so you can overclock that 3800, and get the performance out it that it's possible to get.

 

[akugami]

As other's have said, don't bother with buying faster RAM. Assuming your RAM is not really low quality and can do 2-4-4-8 or roughly that at 1T timing then you're ok and I recommend sitting pat.

Just use a memory divider and try to get as close to DDR333 as possible. If you're benchmarking something that only checks the memory subsystem, it can show a huge difference, 10-20% difference in performance at times even. However, in real world usage playing games or running productivity apps the difference is in fact very minor. In most games, the difference between DDR333 is only 1-2fps between DDR333 and DDR400 at the same timings.