A Ram question from a non tech type..

[The Fishmeister]

OK...looking for most bang for buck in my next u/g....and looking to lose the lag I get whenever I host a game of Ghost Recon with more than 6 players.

Currently running a MSI KT6 Delta mobo with Athlon Xp2600 Barton. Ram is 2 x 256Mb DDR PC 2700 from, ah hem, PC World. The own brand stuff. ( I know...) Nvidia FX5200 g/card. 7200rpm 40 g Hard disk. 1Mb d/l 256 u/l cnxn.

I have the RAM in DIMM 1 and 2. The board can take 3GB in 3 different slots. The manual says 'in any order'. Hmmm, is that right? My techy m8, who I suspect of making up answers if he does'nt know, reckons 'RAM is RAM'... reading these forums tells me that Corsair is expensive for a reason.
So...I want to u/g to 1Gb cause I reckon this will help the gaming. But what to buy in relation to configuration and best value? Mid-range not Corsair is the limit to my price range. Some things I have read seem to suggest that throwing away the current stuff and starting over with a new stick of 1Gb is the future...?? I don't know. Suggestions please...thanks for your time in advance.

[mike_w]

If I were you, I think you would be much better off getting a better graphics card, it would provideK a much larger performance boost. Something like a 9800 Pro (about £135 from Komplett) would make your system much better, since the FX5200 is a low end card.

If you still want RAM, then I would either recommend some Crucial Ballistix for speedy CAS2 RAM, or some Corsair Value Select RAM if you want to spend less (Komplett and Scan have it fairly cheap).

If you're npt overclocking, then you can probably get away with mixing RAM brands. But if the RAM you have now has slow timings, there's no point spending money on more RAM that has faster timings since it'll have to run at the same speed as your current RAM. What speed is the RAM you have now (timings)?

Hope this helps.

[Byatt]

I echo what mike says (the 5200 really is the bottleneck, prebuilds from PC world always have an absolute waste-of-space for a gfx card, sadly), but I'd go for some uber-value-for-money patriot ram from tekheads in place of either corsair value/ballistix.

[yamangman]

I agree, get a R9800 Pro. Can be had for as little as £120.

[The Fishmeister]

Thank you all for your feedback...

Mike, when you mention 'timings' on RAM, are you referring to the PC 2700/333 timings or some thing else?

As I'm also running Tiger Woods 2004 I'm really into another graphics card....I know this ain't great.

[mike_w]

Thank you all for your feedback...

Mike, when you mention 'timings' on RAM, are you referring to the PC 2700/333 timings or some thing else?

As I'm also running Tiger Woods 2004 I'm really into another graphics card....I know this ain't great.

I don't know too much about timings, but I think the CAS value is the most important in AMD Athlon XP systems. CAS is normally 2, 2.5 or 3, lower being better. From what I've seen, it's not worth spending the extra £50 for a gigabyte of RAM that has a CAS rating of 2 rather than 2.5, since the performance gain doesn't tend to be very high (less than 5%). For the same amount of money, the performance benefits would be greater from a new CPU or graphics card.

If you buy RAM that runs at a CAS of 2, andyou already have RAM that runs at a CAS 2.5, and you try running them together, the new RAM will have to run at the same speeds as the old RAM, so all the RAM will run at CAS 2.5. This means that you wasted money on RAM that could run at CAS 2, since it would be running at CAS 2.5. If you still don't understand, feel free to rant at me!

Hope this helps

Mike

[The Fishmeister]

No need to rant, that was well explained. A look at the mobo manual explained basic stuff on RAM including the RAS,CAS latencies.

It seems that the money would be better spent on a new graphics card, which will certainly help game performance. However as a muso too, running a M Audio Delta 44 card and Sonar 2, and the fact that Ghost Recon is a very CPU intensive game, I'm still torn. Won't go onto a new CPU as I think the next one will be Athlon 64 which means new board....so its a g/ card maybe. But I will check out the CAS values. And will act on your advice.

Cheers nice one. Catch you around.

Alun.