DDR 667 5-5-5-15 - worth upgrading to DDR 800 4-4-4-12?

hohum

hohum

hohum

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Hey chaps, just the question in the title really - have 4GB of OCZ DDR 667 5-5-5-15 currently (bought back in 2007 when I built my PC), and was just wondering if there would be much real-world benefit upgrading... considering the DDR 800 4-4-4-12 Kingston kit on OCUK is pretty cheap (£40). I should point out that I don't overclock (besides which I have one of the early Q6600 B3 revisions that gets quite toasty, so haven't bothered for that reason).

Thoughts? Ta :)
 
Well first of all there isn't much point buying 6400 when 8500 is about the same price. To be completely honest if you have 4gig of DDR2 running stable and you don't overclock then I dont think that I would bother.

I'm sure others will disagree.....
 
Or agree completely...

With the current low prices of DDR2 I can see the point of adding extra memory if you can make use of it.

I can't see any point replacing existing memory just to get tighter timings as the difference won't be noticeable in anything apart from benchmarks.

A Q6600 only needs PC4200 to run at stock so your existing memory is already over spec'd.
 
Hey hohum :)

If your motherboard can support 533MHz memory (aka PC2-8500, DDR2-1066) then get a nice 4GB kit, your system will *Fly* :eek:

You don't have to overclock to use fast memory as modern Intel LGA775 boards have standard support for up to 600MHz/DDR2-1200 :D

The faster your memory is the faster every single thing you do with your computer will be, the killer part I find is the reduced system latency you get from using killer fast ram!

You hear people talking about a *snappy* system well trust me you get some ram running at 533MHz-600MHz (DDR2-1066/DDR2-1200) and you will understand . . . . this all depends though if your motherboard has support for fast memory (and memory straps etc).
 
Cheers for the responses but I've decided not to bother - if a dirt cheap 8GB kit appears then maybe I'll go for that, otherwise I'll just put it off until I upgrade my system overall (could be a while yet...).
 
mame said:
Well first of all there isn't much point buying 6400 when 8500 is about the same price. To be completely honest if you have 4gig of DDR2 running stable and you don't overclock then I dont think that I would bother.

I'm sure others will disagree.....
Click to expand...

Completely agree on this one, there is no advantage in buying slower ram when its more expensive. Upgrading from DDR2 6400 - DDR2 8500 without increasing total memory, on a stock speed Core 2 processor, is almost pointless. The "usable" memory bandwidth cant exceed the total bandwidth of the frontside bus anyway.

On an overclocked system, the frontside bus is overclocked as well, so faster memory can help. Although the "default" for a Q6600 with a 1066FSB is "just" DDR2 4200 (533mhz), The PC5300 (667mhz) memory is good for 1333FSB which the OP isnt using anyway.

The latency argument is valid, but a lot of high speed memory, compensates for the high speed, with increased latency/slacker timings. But if you have the "best" high speed memory with very low latency, there is potential for improvement on very small transfers. However Core2 processors were designed to guestimate the next required data, and on a cache miss, they will try to get a lot of data from main memory, so bandwidth comes into play more often that the ultimate low latency.
 
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