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Hi
Could someone help me with ram speeds.
i was going to get 4Gb ballistixs @8500 speed as they are so cheap but every post i read people are buying either 5300 or 6400 stuff is there much diffeence?
Will probably be running on a Abit ip35 pro with a E6600
Thanks
Robert
Most people buy the 5300 and overclock it to 6400 speed. Buying the 8500 just gives you more scope to overclock your system, but if you aren't then buy what's cheapest. I'm a firm believer that more RAM is better than speed ot timing anyways.
At the end of the day, unless you overclock heavily you'll never use that RAM at it's rated speed.
With a FSB of 1066, the matching RAM speed is 533 (PC4200) and this is what Core2Duo's use unless overclocked.
For a moderate overlock, you can use PC5300 which corresponds to a FSB of 1333, giving a RAM speed of 667 (PC5300), on a E6600 chip this gives you a clock speed of 3Ghz.
The next step up is PC6400, which allows a FSB up to 1600 before you overclock the memory, as this tends to be the upper limit on most people's chips without dropping the multiplier on the chip, it's a popular choice. You'd end up with an E6600 running at 3.6GHz with an FSB of 1600 if you were to reach the limits of the RAM.
If you plan on doing a silly speed overclock, you'd need memory rated to 1066 (PC8500), which allows a FSB up to 2133 without the memory being overclocked itself. However most motherboards don't let you reach that kind of speed without dropping the chip multiplier.
All in all though, as it's been said, it's the timings that tend to deliver more performace improvements and getting RAM with better timings tends to increase the cost and improve on the quality.
The ballistix 8500 can run at really low timings, mine will do 3-3-3-3 @ over 900mhz, but you have to consider that when you add 4 sticks, you will be stressing the northbridge, so the chances of running these tight timings with a decent overclock on the cpu AND 4x1gb installed arent too great.
For most things, the difference in timings is minimal anyway.