4gb or 6gb in an Asus P5K.

[stevie lee]

simple question really..

I have a mate who has 2x1gb - '2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18' and a standard Asus P5K.

he's recently upgraded to Vista Ultimate and would like more ram. would another set of exactly the same stuff do, so he has 4x1gb = 4gb total.

OR

would he be better getting '4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18' and keeping the 2gb plugged in for a total of 6gb - 2x1 and 2x2..

would this work? recommended ram voltage and other tweaks in the BIOS would be helpful if this is possible.

_______
he does some video editing and encoding, Crysis, COD4. he has a stock-clocked Core2 E4*** and is getting a quad core when the prices come down to around £50..

and I don't know whether he wants to get rid of the 2gb he already has so recommending just the 2x2gb isn't an option at the moment.


which would be better? 4gb or 6gb?

[SiM]

2gb looks fine for that imo

[stevie lee]

well he's buying another hard drive and has the money, so from his point of view - 'might as well while rams cheap and have the money. get them both at the same time.'

and he'll be keeping the system for as long as he can to get maximum bang-for-buck. his old system is a 1.8ghz P4 with 256mb ram. so thats an idea of how long between upgrades.

[Yellowbeard]

simple question really..

which would be better? 4gb or 6gb?

4gb total if he's using a 32bit OS.

6gb total if he's using a 64bit OS.

Ideally, he'll get the 2 x 2gb kit. It's best not to mix different revisions of memory.

[SiM]

E4xxx does not have enough grunt to do heavy multi-tasking anyway... so unless he is planning to use something incredibly memory intensive then 2gb is enough... tell him to try it with 2gb and if he notices it not being enough, then buy more

[MagicBoy]

I'm running this RAM on a P5K-E WiFi. Currently have 6GB and it's perfectly stable in XP or Vista 64. XP only sees 3.2GB and occaisionally refuses to hibernate which is a known issue.

I'm planning on keeping the 4GB kit, the 2Gb will be going into another HTPC box which is yet to be built.

[TAKTAK]

if he does go with the 4*1GiB option then he may have to up the NB voltage to get things stable (note the emphasis on the may...)

but if it's 32bit then the total amount usable would be 4GiB total (the total including VRAM etc) so if you had a 1GiB GFX card and 4GiB of RAM on a 32bit OS then the system would only see 3GiB of RAM

but if it is a 64bit OS then the maximum addressable is (IIRC) 16TiB, and it may be worth just getting the 2*2GiB set (and possibly looking into selling the current 2GiB set [or just leaving them to oneside]) as there is a possibility that it could slow things down...

so in essence, personally I would get a 2*2GiB set, bung that in, (instead of the 2*1GiB set), instead of faffing around with timings and voltages trying to get things stable if they arn't to begin with...
and also, going the 2*2GiB set allows further upgrade to 4*2GiB in the future much easier (if he's that way inclined... as 4GiB is still the sweet spot for most things)

but i would be tempted to get the HDD on it's own now and strick it out with 2GiB and then when quaddies are around the pricepoint thats acceptable then get the RAM and proccy, as then you don't have the problem of not actually using the RAM and just having some redundant hardware in the machine.

[stevie lee]

thanks you lot above.. will advise my mate on what to buy.. i'll keep you in suspense on what he buys because I'm feeling a bit malicious and evil at the moment.. mwaha!

thanks again..

ps. just realised forgot to mention - 64bit ultimate vista. doh!

[stevie lee]

He bought the extra 2x1gb in the end, making 4x1gb total. slotted it into the mobo, went into bios - 3rd july 07 version, set the ram at ddr2-800 then the timings as manual - 5.5.5.15.. booted into windows no problem and was 15 seconds quicker at it too..

played an hour or so of crysis in high details. no slowdown whatsoever, all 4gb recognised, no problems..

verdict - bloody good ram for £30, different revisions work together - everyone should buy some.

[Yellowbeard]

Glad to hear it went in without issue.