2Gb or 3Gb?

[matt_fsr]

Ho hum - following a recent bit of tinkering around with old systems, im now left with my old 1Gb of Geil DDR400 - in the shape of 2x512Mb sticks.

At the moment my gaming rig is running 2x 1Gb DDR 400 sticks at 425Mhz, the 512Mb sticks used to hit this too no problem as well.

Question is - would it be worth adding the extra sticks into my rig to give it 3Gb under XP, and dropping the command rate to 2T? Or wouldnt I see much performance drop by doing that?

Thoughts ppl? (yeah yeah, i will go C2D one day with a shiny 4Gb kit...)

 

[Tetras]

Leave it as it is. Doubt you need the extra memory.

 

[dazz25]

I would stick it in if it's just a spare!

Or you could sell it and put the money towrds a C2D!!

 

[Chimerical]

You'd lose Dual Channel operation if you had 3GB but overall, you should see performance gains in multitasking.

 

[matt_fsr]

You'd lose Dual Channel operation if you had 3GB but overall, you should see performance gains in multitasking.

Ah yes, i'd forgotten that it'd lose dual channel - the good old' DDR needs as much bandwidth as it can get for Crysis, so I shall probs just leave as is.

The 1Gb is currently underworked in my gf's PC, but it replaced 768Mb which I still have, but is worth naff all... same as the 1Gb really.

 

[Phemo]

Why would you lose dual channel if you have 4 sticks? 2x512 and 2x1GB would populate both channels equally so you'd get 3GB in dual channel mode no problem.

 

[Blackhawk47]

keep your 2gb. not much point adding extra just now.

 

[InkZ]

Just try it?

 

[Yellowbeard]

You won't lose dual channel with 4 modules. It certainly won't hurt to try the extra memory. Command rate at 2T is fine. 1T is faster only in benchmarks, real world they are pretty much equal.

Also, you will likely see the benefit of the extra memory if you are currently having situations where you run out of memory using 2gb.