So You Want more RAM EH?!

Ok, so, currently I have 2 sticks of RAM in my PC, these are my full system specs so you can understand where I'm coming from in this post a little more.

Pentium D 805 2.8Ghz Proc
Asus P5WD2-Premium Mobo
Corsair XMS2 2X1024 2x512 MB Matched PC6400 RAM (Runs @ 5-5-5-18, even though its meant to be 5-5-5-15 :undecided )
Tagan 530W Easycon Series PSU
Asus X800XT 256mb Graphics card.

Now, I was happy with my system until right in the middle of december when my GFX Card fan broke, leading to a return with refund, with which money I replaced my X800XT with a 256mb X1950XT.

Now, I expected a rather large performance increase here, since the X800XT was almost a 2 year old tech, and the X1950 is considerably more recent, more than a year younger in fact.

The lack of apparent performance increase has led me to the conclusion that the rest of my system is a bottleneck for my GFX performance, which simply, will not do.

So, Core2Duo it is then? Yes....but I'm waiting on the new revisions to be released, I've got my eye on the E6320? I think that is correct.

So obviously the new motherboard is required, but then we reach the issue of RAM.

My current RAM isn't really "behind the times" in anything but its timings, and I guess module size, but for now, 3GB would be plenty.

SO, if I was to upgrade buying two 1GB Sticks, so I have the four sticks, does it matter about the speed of it?

For example, If I buy a matched DDR2 PC-8000 2GB kit, would it matter what make it was? would it be faster than buying two 1GB sticks with the same speeds as my current RAM?

What would be the ideal RAM speed to buy? is 800Mhz enough or do I really need to look into 1066?

Basically, I know my procs, I'm ok on MoBo's, but I'm a RAM n00b.

Any advice would be well recieved, including any ideas on why my 5-5-5-15 "Certified" RAM only runs at 5-5-5-18, thankyou for your time, comrades :cool:

I would probably just keep the ram you have and spend more on the other components you are upgrading. AFAIK unless you overclock DDR2 6400 is fine for core 2 duo.

PC6400 is fine for overclocking aswell so i wouldnt worry at all

Lee

Yeh 6400 is a good starting point. Im sure they will overclock a little further.

Ok, it is my intention to keep these sticks so that sounds good.

But Can I then buy faster RAM to go with them in the other 2 slots? will the fact I have two slower sticks hit the performance of the higher speed sticks? and can I differentiate in the BIOS between the speeds of two different sets of RAM?

Thanks for ur advice guys

You could buy faster RAM but it will clock down to PC6400. As for your timings what motherboard do you have? Are timings set by SPD or manually?

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Originally Posted by Splash

You could buy faster RAM but it will clock down to PC6400. As for your timings what motherboard do you have? Are timings set by SPD or manually?

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Asus P5WD2-Premium, and I don't know :embarrassed:

Doesn't Corsair specify 2 sets of timings for it's modules? One is the JEDEC timings, and the other is the SPD settings.

To be honest, I think you'd be better off to wait and see how the new CPU works in the system before you think about the RAM. That gfx card, with a Core2Duo and 3GB of RAM sounds pretty tasty to me!