pc4200 vs pc8500, which one do I want?

[brentonhill]

Hey Guys, I was hoping you would be able to clear this up for me.

I am going to get a nforce 680i board with a core 2 e6600 which runs at 1066mhz.

The two obvious choices for RAM that jump out at me are pc4200 which runs at 533mhz (half the 1066mhz) and the pc8500 which runs at 1066mhz.

I guess the RAM with speeds inbetween this will not be as good for the system and 1066mhz will be the best, is that right?

If soo how much better will the 1066mhz stuff be, is it really worth the extra money? (can get 2GB of pc4200 for £100ish and 2GB of pc8500 for £180ish)

Thanks in advance

Brent

[staffsMike]

First thing i would do...is post this in the right part of the forum

second would be to get pc6400 (800mhz as its best bang for buck)

[kalniel]

Hey Guys, I was hoping you would be able to clear this up for me.

I am going to get a nforce 680i board with a core 2 e6600 which runs at 1066mhz.

The two obvious choices for RAM that jump out at me are pc4200 which runs at 533mhz (half the 1066mhz) and the pc8500 which runs at 1066mhz.

Ok well first thing you need to realise is that your core2 is running at 266mhz. PC4200 ram also runs at 266mhz. Therefore to run your PC at full speed you just need PC4200.

If you want to run a divider so your RAM runs faster than your CPU, then you can use RAM running at 333, 400 or 533mhz. Or you can overclock your system so that the whole thing runs at 333, 400, or less likely, 533mhz.

[brentonhill]

Probs would have helped! But I here that there is no point buying that RAM when the processor is running at 1066 because it would'nt work as well as the other two?

Was looking at that RAM and it is a good price!

[brentonhill]

Ahh ok so what does the 1066 represent? What are the advantages of the RAM being faster than the processor. What would you do?

[kalniel]

Ahh ok so what does the 1066 represent? What are the advantages of the RAM being faster than the processor. What would you do?

1066 represents the motherboards FSB, but this is intel's 'quad pumped' FSB, ie 4x the actual CPU clock.

Running RAM faster than the CPU can mean that you get a quicker response in RAM intensive scenarios. Certainly the Core 2 Duo shows small gains in increasing RAM speeds up to about 400mhz. However these increases aren't likely to be significant in say a game where RAM speed isn't really a bottleneck.

As for what I'd do.. I'd look at my budget. If the RAMs the same price I'd go with the higher speed one. I'd probably even be willing to pay a small fraction more for DDR2 667 ram (PC 5300), but I wouldn't splash out on DDR2 800 or 1066 unless I was into serious overclocking (which I'm not.)

[brentonhill]

Cool, thanks for your help, I think I will probably get 4GB of the cheaper stuff then? Makes more sence?!

[this_is_gav]

Do you have a system that can address 4gb? Win XP and Vista x86 (as opposed to newer and more technically advanced x64 (which can have driver problems, which is why there's still x86 versions of the OS's around))

[brentonhill]

I will be using windows vista home premium, just the 32 bit version but I will eventually play with the 64bit version. Will I be wasting 2GB?

[this_is_gav]

It's a bit hit-and-miss, but with the 32bit you'll get roughly 2.8-3.3gb. For some reason there's never an exact figure from system to system :\

[kalniel]

I don't know for definite, but I'm pretty sure that's just per process, so you'll still actually get good use of the 4gb overall as you're unlikely to have many apps that will want to use that much by themselves.

[this_is_gav]

I understood that was all Windows 32-bit could address, and that's where the restriction was?

[kalniel]

The restriction in XP is due to the fact it reserves the last GB (3->4) as page file, I think. Obviously Vista has a completely different cache system which makes me think it could address this last GB without issue (as in effect it caches all available RAM and makes it available as needed).

The 32bit restriction technically is more to do with the 4gb limit - to get over 4gb you need to go 64bit. But my guesstimate is that the 3gb limit is an XP thing (but not the 2.3gb per process thing).

[brentonhill]

I think 4GB will be more than enough with 2GB seeming to be vistas sweet spot anyway.

It will be a while before i make the 64bit jump. I have just been skipping from work laptop to work laptop for far too long now and just need a decent stable base at home which I can play with.

Think I will go for 4gb of OCZ PC2-6400 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=MY-072-OC

What do you think?

[this_is_gav]

But my guesstimate is that the 3gb limit is an XP thing (but not the 2.3gb per process thing).

Nope, Vista x86 is the same as XP x86. You can't use all 4gb.

[Smokey21]

For crying out loud, move this in proper forum.