RAM

I'm in the process of my well overdue upgrade and have begun looking around now at cpu/ram combos. I will almost certainly stick with a Pentium, even though Athlon has the 64bit processors, and I was wondering what is the best ram for lets say a 3.2 chip with 800MHz fsb on an intel motherboard?. I never can seem to get a grip on this info so I was wondering what you computer braniacs might have to say about it? Your help and input would be greatly appreciated.

hmmm, shove a couple of gigs of crucial ddr into the beast.

on a related issue..

what is ECC and non-ECC ram?

If you can you could go for Rambus Ram.... They are only with Pentium chips I think.

Bah, let's spend a lot more money for less performance per dollar. cough get AMD cough you don't HAVE to get an Athlon 64 you know. Personally over experiences in the last few years I've converted from Intel to AMD and from Nvidia to ATI and unless some huge ass change happens and those companies are annhilated or something I'd never consider going back.

Personally my newest rig has this combo...

Athlon XP Barton 2500+ ($120 CDN)
2x512 OCZ pc3200 RAM (2 sticks for dual channeling) ($350 CDN)
and you choice of MoBo ($100-200 CDN)

and you can overclock that beast to a 3200+ speed with say a Vantec Aeroflow CPU fan. Saves you at least $600 bucks from the alternative AMD, and roughly the same as the comparable Intel. Any technician I've spoken with is a fan of AMD. A lot of numbers on the box and a high price tag doesn't always mean it's the best. I suggest you research it for yourself for best results. (Look on many comparison sites, and reviews...average out your findings)

ECC (Error Check and Correcting) Memory uses coding techniques to encode each memory word so that the content of the word could be checked by verifying the code.

DDR -?Double Data Rate?-, is a successor to the aging SDRAM technology. DDR has the theoretical ability to transport twice as much data as SDRAM. DDR is a technological progress that allows RAM to transport information on top and bottom of a single electronic wave-signal, whereas SDRAM have the ability to transport only on one of them. When somebody say ?200MHz DDR?, this means that you do run your DDR RAM at 200MHz, but in theory it?s 400MHz SDRAM.

DDR Ram is becoming the standard, and I recommend anything rated DDR 266 or higher.

Another thing to consider is nview mobos.. they are great for mappers, they take alot of the stress off the CPU, and use the newer higher standard graphic cards better.

Also make sure the Mobo has a 8x AGP slot.

I am an AMD man, and I also swear by nVidia, but what ever your preferance is, make sure its what you want.. because with things changeing as fast as they do, your already 3 steps behind as soon as you walk out the door.

Good Luck

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If it's in stock, it's out of date.

If its in the truck, on its way to being in stock its outta date. =) heh heh...

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I guess its outta date 2 seconds after they came up with the idea..

Okay, there are a bunch of different types of memory you can use for the 800mhz 'bus' system. Firstly, you can use your choice of PC3200 memory (one stick). This will mean you are running memory in single channel mode (slower). This type of memory can be bought with a CAS rating of 3,2.5,or 2, with 2 being the fastest and most expensive, however, when I say fastest, there isn't really a noticable improvement going from CAS 2.5 to CAS 2. If you get buffalow PC3200 sticks with CAS2.5, they will be cheap and plenty good. The second option is to use two identical sticks (the same type as in option 1). This will have the advatage of meaning that you will be running in dual channel mode, which is faster, and shouldn't cost any more, because say you wanted 512 megs of ram, two 256 meg sticks won't cost any more than one 512 meg stick, so unless you only want 256 megs of ram, you will almost certainly want to get two identical sticks (a 'matched pair'), and run in dual channel mode. Now, since you are looking at the 3ghz p4, I am assuming that you aren't going to overclock, so there really is no point at all in you buying memory that is more than PC3200 (e.g. PC3500, PC3700, PC4000). So in conclusion, the only thing you really want to buy is two PC3200, CAS 2.5 sticks of either 256 or 512 (or 1024 if you are rich) megs. These should be less than $40 each (for the 256 meg ones).

What I would say however is that it is not worth paying the extra for a 3GHz P4; the 2.4 and 2.6 are both way cheaper (2.6 is cheaper than 2.4 right now), and will both overclock to 3GHz+ with ease and with the stockheatsink. Also, do not bother to pay the 50% extra to get a 875 based motherboard; the ASUS 865 motherboards are as fast as the 875 boards of other manufacturers, and are about 70% of the price. If you are overclocking, you don't have to get the more expensive memory as you can run the memory at a lower clock speed than the CPU 'bus' speed. For example, if you got the P4 2.4 (800 mhz), and ran it at 3.0, you would have a 1000 mhz 'bus' on the cpu, but could still run the memory at the same 800 mhz. If you are rich, you could get PC4000 memory, and run the memory on the 1000 mhz 'bus' as well, and such a system should be faster than a system made using a p4 3.0 - at the cost of expensive memory.

Hope that helps!

[edit] AGP 8x cards do not require AGP 8x, they only support it if the motherboard does, and AGP 8x offers little or no performance benifit over AGP4x - it is mainly a gimik. [/edit]

Myrk- said:
If you can you could go for Rambus Ram.... They are only with Pentium chips I think.

You might not want to do that m8. Intel and Rambus had a falling out of "large" proportions some time back. I think I remember reading that Intel no longer designs support for Rambus memory modules.

Also to clarify the ECC thing, you normally only use ECC ram in servers where it might be critical to your business or something if you get one byte wrong. For a home PC you never use it unless you have too much money and want to boast about the fact that you got memory twice as expensive as everyone else :smile: . And I thought it stood for error correction control...

I also wouldn't go for a 3.2ghz (or whatever happens to be the fastest chip) as its not worth paying a big premimum for so little extra performance when compared with slightly slower chips.

Pretty much anything over 2ghz with a middle of the range DX9 card is going to be able to run current games ok. Its only insane 1024+ modes with all the gubbins turned on that need top of the line stuff.

Go for better quality brands of ram - Corsair, Crucial, Geil, Kingston etc. generic stuff is cheaper but tends to be more flaky. If the motherboard supports dual channel mode (most do) then get 2 sticks for the extra performance, 512mb is the minimum i would go for.

scary Jeff is correct, ECC is mainly used in servers.. home PC users hardly ever use it.

I saw a performance boost when I got the agp 8x over the 4x Jeff. so please explain to me the gimick of a 8x slot.

scary Jeff has some good advice, there is no need to get the biggest and badest on the shelf, unless you need bragging rights or just want to spend that kinda dough.

I never overclock, and I would suggest you dont O.C. either.. but thats just me.

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Thank you all very much for your info, especially the very informative reply scary. So I will now be shopping for a P4 (most likely the 2.8 chip for reduced price), and 2 512 MB sticks of DDR ram on an 800 fsb board(intel or asus not sure yet) with an 8x agp.(Gimmick or not, technology will take advantage I feel of it sooner or later). I might even grab the 9800 graphics card if I start drinking before I go shopping, hehehe.

being rather poor, i can only buy/make a new PC once every 2 years or so and try to get one that will do me the entire time..

if all goes well, i will have me a new 2.6 soon :smile:

i will be content with that for quite some time :wink:

Buffalow is a good memory. Loads of people are raving about it - it uses winbond chips which have a very good reputation. Look for it on newegg.com, it gets full marks in every user review.

Orph, I am also planning to get the P4 2.6. However, Intel are about to ship the 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, and 3.2 with a meg of L2 cache (double what they have now) at no additional cost. This means you may be able to get a better chip for the same money, or that you will be able to get the 'old' 512K chips at a reduced price. Remember that in the P2 and P3 days, the only difference between the celeron and full price versions was that the celerons had half the L2 cache. However, I am not sure how much of a difference going from 512K to a meg will make, and I am also not sure when they plan to release these improved chips...

As for AGP 8x, I am pretty confident in saying that the benifit of going to 4x from 2x is minimal, let alone the difference in going from 4x to 8x. The only time you need the kind of bandwidth that 8x gives is if you are using AGP texturing - using the main memory as video memory for textures. Perhaps if you have a card with little memory which may be using this mode sometimes, AGP 8x could make a difference, but most AGP8x cards come with so much memory that this method is never needed (it's slower). Google for "agp 8x performance increase" (without quotes) and you get a bunch of articles published this year saying that AGP 8x offers at best 3-5% improvement when using cards that support it, and that this is mainly due to various tweaks and not because 8x has double the theoretical bandwidth. If it were possible to get 4x and 8x versions of the identical card, going from one to the other is never going to take you from a choppy, unplayable game, to a playable one. 3-5% is the kind of thing you only notice in a benchmark.

Of course, 3-5% is more than 0%, and if the cards you're already getting have them then why not eh? If you weren't planning on getting a mobo/card that supports this, then don't stress.

Well yeah... the point I'm trying to make is that the marketing and the name 8x instead of 4x would suggest that 8x is twice as fast - it may be in theory, but in practice, it isn't anywhere near.

well i tell you what jeff, i have never owned a PC with an AGP slot at all, so this one i am about to make will be my first ever.. even tho it will not be a P4 it will be a P4 motherboard, and capable of upgrading to one as soon as i can scrap up the extra cash..

i think a 4x card and a 2.6 celeron will be a vast step up from a 1.4 T-Bird and a PCI card.. :smile:

scary_jeff said:
Well yeah... the point I'm trying to make is that the marketing and the name 8x instead of 4x would suggest that 8x is twice as fast - it may be in theory, but in practice, it isn't anywhere near.

You're really anti-APG8x aren't you :razz:

I don't have anything against agp 8x itself, I just resent the way people always say things like oooh my new motherboard has agp 8x therefore it will be twice as fast! or oooh i'll get this board/card instead of that one because this has the amazing agp 8x! Seems like everybody is sucked into believing that 8x is going to improve their life somehow :sad:

scary_jeff said:
I don't have anything against agp 8x itself, I just resent the way people always say things like oooh my new motherboard has agp 8x therefore it will be twice as fast! or oooh i'll get this board/card instead of that one because this has the amazing agp 8x! Seems like everybody is sucked into believing that 8x is going to improve their life somehow :sad:

didn't we just do this a few days ago over linux ? :wink:

anyways, i expected way more "you screwed up orph's" over my decision to get a celeron than i did..

i did hear someplace that the AGP slot is backward compliant, seems to me that when technology finally catches up to the 8X claims, people who already have it will be ok..

i am not sure, but i don't think the 8x slot increases the price of the MB significantly, so whats the gripe?

i do get annoyed when manufacturers claim twice as fast, but neglect to say how/when it can be achieved..

Yeah pretty much every motherboard now has AGP8x, by by the time you need AGP8x for a noticable benifit, new types of memory and CPU will be out that will mean you need a new motherboard to upgrade anyway, which no doubt will have AGP 16x on it...

scary_jeff said:
I don't have anything against agp 8x itself, I just resent the way people always say things like oooh my new motherboard has agp 8x therefore it will be twice as fast! or oooh i'll get this board/card instead of that one because this has the amazing agp 8x! Seems like everybody is sucked into believing that 8x is going to improve their life somehow :sad:

Personally I'd rather beat people who gloat about the supposed 800Mhz Bus of P4s...or ATA133. Those are ones that show that you either a)Don't really look into products well enough or b)Just like to see a lot of numbers on your box but don't realize there is better for cheaper. More expensive isn't always better. I.E. 256Mb Video Cards...what a great way to lighten your wallet a good $100 without doing anything beneficial.

Orph, AGP owns the hell out of PCI based Video Cards. There is a huge difference. And not all AGP slots are the same, my new MoBo cannot support AGP 2x, only 4x and 8x so I have to be careful which cards I put in.

Yeah ata133 is a waste of time but surely a 200mhz dual ddr bus isn't? I know it isn't running at 800mhz at all, but it is better than it's '533' predecessor...