advice on memory choice.

Oak sMoked Baco · 2 Mar 2006 at 16:48

Afternoon all

I am need some advice in an area my IT brain doesnt know much or is unsure about. RAM

I've just managed an upgrade to an athlon 64 3200 venice and ABIT av8 mobo (i need agp cos i cant afford a gfx card update too

I have RAM i can use at the moment but I would like to invest in some Dual channel ram to get the most out of the setup. There are two questions I hope can be answered to help my cause.

What manufacturer would you recommend?
I was looking at the Ballistix from Crucial as they are resonably priced.

The other question is a bit more technical. I would like to OC the cpu as the board and chip are both very good for it. I was wondering about the type of ram i should use i.e 3200, 4000, etc...

would it be worth getting the faster RAM as you know it can handle the faster FSB? I hope you understand what i'm getting at.

Cheers for any help

Stupido · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:30

ballistix have a reputation for failing .lots of posts on these forums about it. however crucial have a great customer support / returns systems . youll get a slight increase going for pc4000 ram over 3200 ram but the improvment is negligable

i.e in the testing i did on my corsair i got about 700 3d2001 marks extra running it at 500 mhz 3-3-3-8

compared to the default pc3200 400mhz at 2.5 3-3-6

so generally speaking its not woth the extra money going for pc4000 unless of course you splash out on some sticks with good timings like the mushkin extreme pc4000 which run at 2-2-2-6 1T 500mhz . but with he mushikin you have to stick a 80mm + fan on em or else they boil !

Oak sMoked Baco · 3 Mar 2006 at 16:28

thats for the advice. i'll be staying away from the Ballistix, i've jsut been reading the posts.

it seems u get good performance out those Twinx sticks with a simular cpu so i may look into those. cheers for the help

quadboi · 3 Mar 2006 at 17:23

I have Crucial 2x512mb PC3200 Ram, they are fine (Non-Balistix)

Bookime Wood · 3 Mar 2006 at 18:47

High clocking ram is not essential, running a divider sorts that out, I would get the geil value 1 gb kit below 60 pounds. Another question you may ask, 1gb or 2gb, having just done that upgrade, I could have gotten away with not, you may depending on your usage