4gb @ 1066MHz or 8gb @ 800MHz

.Jay.

.Jay.

.Jay.

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My Corsair RAM died so I RAM'd it back to the Netherlands to get it fixed.

However, Royal Mail did a grand job of not getting it there so now I'm down to 2GB.

Looking at the prices they have rocketed since I bought my original RAM.

My FSB is at 1066MHz, however with very limited PC8500 available would 8gb of PC6400 provide the same / better results?

Gaming isn't so much an issue, however I do a lot of Photoshop work and dabble in video now and then.
 
Before i got my sandybridge system i did a similar upgrade and noticed hardly any speed increase.
 
Depends on timings, but it's up to you. Personally I have never exceeded 4GB so I would go for the 4GB. However if you see yourself going > 4GB than for sure go for the 8GB. The speed isn't too much faster after all.
 
Herecy said:
Depends on timings, but it's up to you. Personally I have never exceeded 4GB so I would go for the 4GB. However if you see yourself going > 4GB than for sure go for the 8GB. The speed isn't too much faster after all.
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The main way I see it at the moment is I can get 8gb of 6400 for pretty much the same price delivered as the 8500 sticks with half the amount.

I was more interested what the performance difference, if side by side (with timings etc the same) whether 1066MHz would be noticeably different 800MHz, and if so how?
 
.Jay. said:
What was your upgrade, 6400 to 8500? Or the amount of ram?
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I replaced 4gig of 6400 with 4gig of 8500. It was a waste of money looking back. Cost me £80 as well for 4gb.

Just bought 16gb of DDR3 for £60 recently. :D
 
Haha 16gb for £60.. my old sticks were £32 delivered for 2gb right at the start.. now for the same stuff 3 years later its £65! Painful
 
.Jay. said:
Ok thats a good side by side at least! So going from what currently is 2GB of 8500 up to 8gb of 6400 would seem a viable option?
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I'd say so if you cant afford the whole setup for DDR3. I'm pretty sure if you google 6400vs8500 ram it will prove that theres hardly and difference between the two.
 
I'm really waiting out for the new releases later this year before updating my 4 year old system! It's going to cost a few quid so may as well do it in one hit lol.

I'll give google a go now and see whats around.
 
As you said, you do a lot of photoshop stuff. 4GB is not enough. 8GB will be fine for most stuff but if you have many many layers or do big photomerges or the like then 8GB won't be enough/be very slow.

When I first moved to DDR3, I should've been sensible and got any 4GB RAM for ~£50 iirc. I went for the high performance low timings RAM and that set me back £90 for just 4GB :( Can get 8GB for £30 now and there's pretty much no real world performance loss. Ah well, that's with all tech nowadays, no running from it!
 
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Its a shame buying DDR2 when its so expensive compared these days, but the cost to upgrade the mobo, cpu and ram would end up quite a bit more! :(
 
If you are doing lots of Photoshop go get the biggest memory you can. I currently run on 8gb and i can't say i'm a very heavy photoshop user but when i get a reasonable file with, say 40 layers it almost eats all the ram up.
 
xxShinobixx said:
If you are doing lots of Photoshop go get the biggest memory you can. I currently run on 8gb and i can't say i'm a very heavy photoshop user but when i get a reasonable file with, say 40 layers it almost eats all the ram up.
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I actually checked the prices out, the RAM that I could get cheaper was on offer and how now disappeared! I might invest in the extra anyway.. anything to get me out of this 2gb hell hole! lol
 
My old Corsair 8GB DDR2 800Mhz 2gb x 4 scored a 7.9 WEI and my current 1600Mhz 16gb scores 7.8 - I don't believe WEI is an accurate way to benchmark anything but I did find this interesting.
 
.Jay. said:
I'm really waiting out for the new releases later this year before updating my 4 year old system! It's going to cost a few quid so may as well do it in one hit lol.

I'll give google a go now and see whats around.
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problem if you buy the very new bits are the cost, and maybe some teething problems. I'd rather buy the current new stable and tested system now. Memory has gone very cheap lately and sure htey will go up again, actually they have started to, becasue I'm watching.

edit:
unless you're waiting for new releases, for the prices of current systems to go down.
 
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