DDR2 RAM Timings for use with Core 2 Extreme?

Ok I really shoudl know this by now, but take this 2 sets of Corsair Ram:

Corsair DDR2 XMS2-6400C3 TwinX 2x1GB 800MHz 3-4-3-9
Corsair DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX 2x1GB 800MHz 4-4-4-12

Now to the best of my knowledge, the only difference is the timings and even still it's basically nothing, so how come the C3 costs £350ish, and the C4 £210ish? Is the C3 worth the extra £140??? It is to go in a computer alongside a Core 2 X6800, so cost isn't desperately relevant, but £140 at least would need justification!

I suppose the next question is whether 1066MHz ram is then advisable? I believe I've read the Core 2 prefers 800MHz or something somewhere though?

Thanks,

ShMeE

No, core 2 runs at 1066Mhz, so it's better to have memory that runs "in sync" with the CPU, memory bandwidth is more important than tight timings here.. And if you plan on overclocking you definatly need ram to run at 1066Mhz, for when you drop the ram divider, you don't want to go too low with low end memory and end up bottlenecking the conroe as it waits for the NB chip to send it data and instructions.
And the reason why memory with tight timings is more expensive is that at these speeds raking in memory chips able to run stabily with tight timings and high frequencies becomes increasingly difficult in large quantity. Oh, and there's the "omgwtflol low latency ram", marketing, and profit margin factors.

Weither lower latency memory has any significant performance advantage is yet to be established firmly in benchies, probibly not, and definatly not worth an extra 140 quid imo.

Ok, so what I should be looking for is to get some DDR2 8500 at 1066MHz (what about 8000 at 1000MHz?), and ignore the timings on the whole?

Sounds to me like this is gonna involve the unfortunate purchasing of this:

Corsair DDR2 XMS2-8500C5 TwinX 2x1GB 1066MHz 5-5-5-12

Only problem with that is it's again around £350.

So just one last question I suppose. What about 4GB vs 2GB. Now I know Windows isn't fully up to 4GB yet, 3.x i think, but Vista isn't too far away and it's presumably better to go straight in for 4 identical 1gb parts rather than getting 2gb now and a different 2gb later? From a cost point of view another £350 is obviously significant, but would it actually be noticeable at all? The system may make for an actively running media centre with a number of extenders when they start to exist, and I believe that more ram would be very significant for that? But how about regular usage such as game loading times, premier pro processing times?

Thank you for your help,

ShMeE

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Originally Posted by Shmee150

Ok, so what I should be looking for is to get some DDR2 8500 at 1066MHz (what about 8000 at 1000MHz?), and ignore the timings on the whole?

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It's up to yourself really, PC8000 might work, knock the ram divider up a notch, bring the FSB up to run the ram at 1000MHz, and you'll have a slight (and very managable) overclock on the conroe. Again, timings don't apear to be much of a factor from what I understand, I belive David mentioned about memory timings and he's been toying with Conroes for awhile now (luck git lol).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shmee150

Sounds to me like this is gonna involve the unfortunate purchasing of this:

Corsair DDR2 XMS2-8500C5 TwinX 2x1GB 1066MHz 5-5-5-12

Only problem with that is it's again around £350.

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I know, kinda painful isn't it?.. This is the problem when demand is higher than supply unfortunatly, it'll probibly take awhile for DDR2 at this freqency to come down to sane pricing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shmee150

So just one last question I suppose. What about 4GB vs 2GB. Now I know Windows isn't fully up to 4GB yet, 3.x i think, but Vista isn't too far away and it's presumably better to go straight in for 4 identical 1gb parts rather than getting 2gb now and a different 2gb later? From a cost point of view another £350 is obviously significant, but would it actually be noticeable at all? The system may make for an actively running media centre with a number of extenders when they start to exist, and I believe that more ram would be very significant for that? But how about regular usage such as game loading times, premier pro processing times?

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Well it depends, if you're running WinXP 32bit, I belive the memory will max out at 3.5GB if you have 4GB stuck in, I suppose this will be the likely case if you play games or whatnot, although weather you actually use anywhere near to 4GB at this point in time is something for yourself to determine.. afaik, stacks of ram only helps premier during the editing process (scanning back and forth over an hour or two of video for e.g.), rather than the actual processing and transcoding which is more CPU limited, having a raptor some other fast mass storage device would work equally well.
However, my guess would be by the time 64bit computing is mainstream (i.e. practically all programs compiled for AMD64 enviroments), 8GB of ram will be some way afordable, and operating systems will natively support that and more.

I know it's a lot to digest, but there ya have it, decissions decissions lol

Thank you for your very helpful responses, I think it's a good move to go for the better 8500 ram, but as to 2gb vs 4gb I'm gonna need to simply decide whether I want to spend the money or not. I'm sure it would be slightly helpful, but whether £350 helpful I think is highly unlikely!

Thanks again,

ShMeE

P.S. Fortunately it's actually only £330 at Scan :P

Ok I do actually have one more question.

I was just looking at the newest motherboards coming for Core 2 Duo/Extreme, in particular the Asus P5B Deluxe and the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4, and something that stands out is that they both emphasise support for DDR2 800, does that mean they don't support DDR2 1066 at all? or have I just got confused with the coding system?

Here are the links:

http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1...79&modelmenu=1
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...me=GA-965P-DS4

Thank you!

ShMeE

I just means that it only offically supports DDR2 800, it'll run DDR2 1066 when bringing the FSB up.. Pretty much the same deal with running an AMD64 with PC4400 memory.

That's an easy bios thing then? Nothing particularly complicated? :P

ShMeE

yea, the BIOS on ASUS boards is pretty easy to follow, and you can use software clocking tools as well provided with the motherboard. the Asus P5B looks like a cracking board, I was even very tempted to get one myself, but I decided to wait until awhile after Christmas and see where Intel is going with all this.

Excellent, thanks again for your help!

ShMeE

I was thinking, the P5W DH Deluxe might apeal to you a bit more, since it supports ATI Crossfire. and can address up to 8GB of RAM :P

That wasn't there when I looked yesterday, nor were the P5Vs.

More to think about then :P

Thanks,

ShMeE

Further looking, I like the sound of Crossfire, early things I've read suggest that a CrossFire X1900XTX setup is better than a 7950GX2 which is always a good thing, only problem is the cost at over £700!!!

Does anybody actually know when DX10 cards are gonna hit? Is it within the next 2 months or further afield?
EDIT: Google answered that one - seems it will be at least at the Vista release, and good cards after that, so maybe April next year, time for the next upgrades then :)
EDIT2: Oh change of plan :P - Nvidia's next gen cards appear to be arriving in August? If that's true, I'll be grabbing one of them (yep nvidia fanboy if I can be :) )

How many monitors does a Crossfire X1900XTX support? Just 2 (1 off each card like nvidia) or a 3rd maybe?

ShMeE

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Originally Posted by Shmee150

Further looking, I like the sound of Crossfire, early things I've read suggest that a CrossFire X1900XTX setup is better than a 7950GX2 which is always a good thing, only problem is the cost at over £700!!!

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Life isn't cheap on the bleeding edge :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shmee150

EDIT2: Oh change of plan - Nvidia's next gen cards appear to be arriving in August? If that's true, I'll be grabbing one of them (yep nvidia fanboy if I can be :) )

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Boo! :P
Being more serious/practical, there's no offical SLi support on conroe boards though.

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Originally Posted by Shmee150

How many monitors does a Crossfire X1900XTX support? Just 2 (1 off each card like nvidia) or a 3rd maybe?

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Yea, it can only output to 2 monitors in Crossfire mode, 2 DVI ports are used to feed the Slave cards tiles to the master card

ati has let intel make crossfire compatible boards but nvidia isnt doing the same with SLI and has decided to go it alone with NF5... which means it will either be the only company except intel to ever make a quality intel-based board or fail miserably and give ATI a big lead

as for the 7950gx2 sli vs x1900xt crossfire, it depends on the res, the 7950gx2s are clocked lower because of heat/power consumption but they are still dual chips on each which counts for a lot

with those screens at max res the quad sli will probably be faster but not by much

its when you want 2580x1600 that quad sli has its place

and crossfire will only work through the dongle output (sli has all but one output disabled too) so you can only use dual screens in non-sli/cf

presumably you need a dual-link connector so there should be one on each card free for when you turn off sli/cf

if you want it for 3d design or something you need quadro-sli which can handle 2 monitors in SLI-mode, otherwise you will have to game on one screen and only use the other for work (which hopefully is what you need anyway)

There have been reports of SLI working on intel boards allready... quad sli, on the i965 chipset with a conroe equipped to be more exact.

Though, anandtech has a pre-lim comparison of the nvidia 590 for intel chipset vs i975x. Its looking close enough in my books considering one is still in beta...

Nox