RAM : The value stuff or the expensive stuff?

[Alun Fisher]

Building a new system, I know enough to put them together[its only 'lego' lol], and a tiny bit more, but not knowlegeable really. This will be my fourth. Had help here in the past under a different ID.

Use : Office, Ghost Recon MP gaming [I am 'clanned up' lol] and sound recording on SONAR 3 + REASON. I download a lot of stuff.

Budget : £700/800 max. BIts so far : Athlon x2 3800, ASUS A8N SLi Deluxe, DABS Value 7900GT. [I currently run a Radeon 9600 SE, so any 7900 will a massive improvement..and will play GRAW!]

SO : do I save a bit by buying 2GB of Corsair Value, or Kingston, as opposed to Corsair TWINX.

Idea is, save a bit by buying lower spec CPU and clock it from 2.0 Ghz to 2.3 ish. The reviews on the board say its good to clock...well its an ASUS and they seem to be the clockers choice. But I am not experienced on this and will just use a utilty to do this. I probably won't mess with the RAM timings especially the voltage, so does the extra money count here? Is the TWINX the way to go?

A local shop are also pricing a build to these specs for me [ If it is near to the price I can build it for...and no grief lol] and can't get CORSAIR [?] and want to put Kingston in. I presume the value stuff...
does it REALLY matter?


Any thoughts are very appreciated

[Agent]

No it doesnt.
Its A64 - go with Value. Ram speed means hardly a thing on them.

And do a search on the subject. Its been covered almost every week

[MantisCSS]

maybe go for something midway, corsair TwinX is brilliant and not to expensive.

[kempez]

maybe go for something midway, corsair TwinX is brilliant and not to expensive.

Agreed something like TwinX or GSkill HZ or Mushkin black performance PC400 should be good. Especially for overclocking

[BUFF]

The reviews on the board say its good to clock...well its an ASUS and they seem to be the clockers choice.

- but it's an nF4 so should be OK

[nvening]

Value, and run on a divider if you need to. (tis what i do an i have a 2.2GHz cpu @ 2.6GHz but keeping my memory @ 400 which makes it just like a stock 2.6GHz chip (well kinda) the A64 does not need extra bandwidth apart from in special cases)

[teachmech]

I agree go for the value and run on a divider when you overclock.

[TooNice]

- but it's an nF4 so should be OK

Umm, weren't the pre-Premium Asus board pretty poor clockers (exceptions aside)? According to what I've found the earlier Deluxe board weren't that great. The Premium was better. The A8N32 were good, and so are the A8R32.

But yea, premium RAM is not very cost effective. There are improvement, but not nearly as much as the money you pour into.

[Nox]

I would also say go for the 'midway' cost. Value stuff is the cheapest they can find, Top end is the best, but somewhere in the middle you will get something that will give you ease of not having to run dividers, flexibility and enough 'twaeking' to keep you happy! though it has been proven the end game speed difference from value compared to heavily oc'd high end ram is only a few % at best.

Nox

[Hullz-Modz]

Personally i'd save a little more money by buying the ASUS A8N-SLI/PREMIUM NF4 SLI, S939, PCI-E (x16), DDR 400, SATA I, SATA/IDE RAID, ATX at £108.10 from Scan, rather than the deluxe at 139.10, so theres an extra £31 back in your pocket or to put towards higher spec RAM.

Judging by what you will be using the system for, is it really necessary to go SLi at all? Are you planning on buying 2 gfx cards in the future? If not, then an even bigger saving could be made. Anything from THIS LINK could save you around £70.

This would give you the option of now purchasing 2GB (2X1GB) Corsair TwinX DDR, PC3200 (400), 184 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 2-3-3-6 for £143.34 or something similar/higher spec.

EDIT 1: Theres AMD Athlon 64 + Corsair Memory Combos this weekend on Scan Mixit too!

EDIT 2: Oh and Yes, the A8N Premium is a good clocker, check my sig!

[TooNice]

Umm, the motherboard he mentioned was not the A8N32 Deluxe (which cost over £130), but the A8N-SLi Deluxe (which cost less than the Premium).

Reports of how well the Premium clock varies greatly. I think the concensus is that it is a big improvement over the non Premium board, but not all of them can do 300+ HTT.

[BenW]

Geil Value. I do the same as nvening, 2.2Ghz AMD64 running at 2.6 with crucial value ram running at stock speed on a divider

[Dark Horse]

Value ram on a divider, performance difference is about 5% less but cost is more like 50% less.

[Alun Fisher]

Thanks to all who replied. I appreciate the input. Opinion so far seems to be the branded value RAM such as Crucuial or Corsair will be fine for A64's, and a couple of you mentioned using 'dividing' too, using Value RAM. Not sure what that means, looking it up.

Buff also hinted the ASUS boards did have a poor clocking history, but were better with the n4 chipset. I least I think that what you meant Buff...[ I only post occasionally in the last few years and you ALWAYS comment lol. Diff names too, Thanks ]

As Toonice said it was the Premium board I had looked at. Answering Hull's good point, I may want to upgrade later to two cards, and its a decision you have to make when building isn't it? So as GR:AW is being tipped to be very graphically good, I'd rather go with upgrade potential built in.

So probably around £110 on Cosair Value as opposed to £143 on Corsair TWIN X. And definitely not the REALLy expensive stuff.

Thanks all.

[Zak33]

it means you set the ram on the mobo bios to a lower clock speed, and then when you up the cpu speed (taking it from 200 to maybe 220 or 230 or higher) the ram follows it up.

Standard chip runs on 200 bus within the confines of the cpu subsystem, and has a Hyper Transport multiplier of 5x. That means the cpu innner strcuture the ram slots runs at 1000mghz


BUT you tell it what ram you're running, so as default you get PC3200 (200 DDR=400) and set it at 400.

Trouble is, if you raise the 200, it makes the ram run faster than spec.

DO it in percentages.....my cpu runs HTT at 250.
50 is exactly 25% more than 200.

So my ram would be running at 200+25%... 250 DDR= 500....which it wontcos its not that kinda ram.

If i knock the ram down to 166 DDR333 in Bios, it would be running 333+25%=416DDR..which sadly it also won't

I fretted about knocking the thing down to 133=DDR266 in BIOS, becuase in an older system that would have the ram running so slow, it would choke the CPU and make the extra clock speed irrelevent. ...but not on this baby!!

I tried running that ram at exactly 400 by running a lower HTT speed
Target =400, which is needs to be exaxctly 20% over 333, so 200HTT x20% = 240 HTT.

ALso tried the "is it gonna be worth it with lower ram speed" of 266 +25% giving me a higher CPU speed, but a lower ram speed 266x25%=333.

On an older cpu, like my Barton, that reduuction in bandwidth would have mad ethe cpu speed irrelevent.

Not here....in the Opteron I have, the 266 running at 333, means I got 250 HTT, and then put the HT multi to 4x (wont run 5x at this speed) and that chpip is much faster than at 240HTT and 4x with ram at 400.

I hope that's worded ok....I know it's right.

[badass]

Another person with the concensus view here - go for branded value RAM and use a divider. The premium stuff just isn't worth the extra money unless you have an unlimited budget.