Named Brand Memory

[shelmec]

Quick Question:

Is it worth paying out more for named brand memory (Corsair seems popular with Scan)?

Also, is it worth buying "matched pairs"?

Thanks

[zulander]

Is it worth paying out more for named brand memory (Corsair seems popular with Scan)? - to avoid installation head aches, yes. If your lucky generic stuff will work but if not its a pain the backside to get it fixed. Check your motherboard for compatibility and then go for Corsair, Crucial, Kingston etc.

Also, is it worth buying "matched pairs"? yes, again for stability

[kempez]

Agreed with above mate.

The better memory also helps a slight increase in gaming performance: and of course for those of us who bench and are speed freaks

[shelmec]

So the "You get what you pay for" rule applies. Thanks for the tips.

Please could you explain (in not too much technical detail) what the w-x-y-x figures on memory are, and what I should look for (i.e. lower is better?)

Thanks

[FEAR]

go with brand memory 100%,

generic can give you installation nightmares, Ive had some bad experiences with generic ram. bad bad bad,


If your not looking to spend too much, and want some decent ram, I would recommend Geil PC3200 1GB value ram. or Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX .

Overclockers.co.uk are doing a summer sale on Corsair ram.

Link here

I use to own some Geil 1gb PC3200 value, this when I first started out building pc's and even though its "value" its very good quality ram. It even overclocks quite well!

For todays demands I would recommend 1GB of ram for sure

I hope this helps.

[kempez]

Well in broad terms (no flames here guys). Those numbers are like the latency (response time) between the RAM and the CPU memory controller.

RAM runs at 200MHz x 2 = 400 (DDR400)

SO what ya want is RAM that runs at DDR400 @ low latencies. Lowest I know (stock) are 2-2-2-5. Which is very good.

Also if you are overclocking (i.e. running the RAM at high speeds to get the most for your money): you want RAM that runs faster but still keeps the low latencies.

For instance: my OCZ Platinum Rev 2 TCCD runs at DDR 600 (FSB: 300) @ 2.5-4-3-6. Thats pretty damn good

[CountStex]

I quite agree, 1GB is becoming a standard entoy level.. I'm happily running with 4 sticks of Corsair Value in 2 machines with never a problem. Althoguh to be fair it's not getting a caning at present as my CPU is 139Mhz, and it's speced up to 200Mhz..

[shelmec]

I had planned on installing 1Gb, so it's good to get that confirmed as a good idea, especially as it's not *too* expensive

Is there as much benefit gained by upgrading to 2Gb from 1Gb as there is from 1Gb from 512Mb?

Thanks for the feedback

[shaithis]

Depends on what your doing but not a lot takes advantage of 2GB yet.

BF2, FarCry64 and WoW I noticed decent performance increases on, as well as editing large files in Photoshop....but not a lot else.

[CountStex]

Probably a bit of a case of deminishing returns, as stated above not much makes use of huge amounts of memory, so the only advantage would really be that you could have more running at once without having the slowdown associated with swapping out to disk. Wouldn;t have to worry abtou having thingings loaded in background when you go to play a game etc, althoguh I still like to do a MSCONFIG no startup items reboot prior to playing anything but that might just be me.