Go for a Value 2 gig kit or pay the extra??

[The B.A.]

Hoping to upgrade this week, going with a new AMD +3800 x2 but a little concerned over what memory to go for. Planning to get 2 gig dual channel PC 3200 CAS 2, never overclocked before but will probably try with this chip as it seems to clock quite well, having said that the cooler I'm getting is Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro so it won't be a major o-clock, not sure how much this affects memory selection . Noticed that some are of the opinion that its not really worth the extra cash and prefer to go for value memory... Is there much to choose from between the different brands? Was looking at the Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS) for around £124 (plus Mr Brown's share) but notice there are a number of similar options to go for, looking at the "latency" figures I guess that the lower the better?

Any advice would be appreciated...

 

[The B.A.]

yep, lower timings the better. I had geil value and it ran fine at 200mhz as it should. I lowered the timings to 2.5-3-3-7 and it ran fine.

my Gskill Hz (pc4000) is running at stock (250mhz) but ive only tried once to lover to cas2.5 and it didnt like it at all. The geil is fine for stock and lower timings but you wont be able to push it puch past 200mhz (or at least i couldnt)

I have the freezer pro cooler aswell and its taken my opteron 800mhz over stock speeds getting 50c at highest temps.

Ive never had corsair memory

TBH I'm not sure how fast I should be trying to get it to run at, I have been building PC's for about 3 years but have never overclocked anything. I have always gone for the cheapest memory in the past - only really worrying about quantity not quality. This time as I am going for this x2 beastie I thought I would have a poke around to see what’s what..

 

[The B.A.]

I would have to agree that tight timings around the ddr400 mark using a divider with a64 is the best option imho as the slight performance increase of pc4000 stuff is just not worth the extra £100+ for the 2gb pairs.

Err.. Whats a divider?

 

[The B.A.]

A divider is a bios option usually used when overclocking the cpu. As you increase the htt (fsb) your memory speed increases with it. Not all memory is capable of the higher speed so one of the divider options is used to run the memory at a fraction of the htt speed. Differing fractions are available to give options to select the memory speed you need e.g. htt/memory: 6/5, 10/7, 3/2. This is a general description as in practice things are a little more complex as the cpu multiplier also comes into the equation.

OK, thanks for the explanation, I'm sure I have read somewhere that running with a divider has an adverse effect on performance (or did I dream that?)

 

[The B.A.]

Seems like knitpicking to me

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40178

I am also wondering whether I should spend ~£110 on 2GB or closer to £140. I realise there is benefit of running low timing or 1:1. But £30 can also be well used for other things...

I mean, at the end of the day, in the real world am I going to notice the difference in performance between the 2? Yes I do game, and do a lot of multi-tasking - but would say a marginal peformance boost be seen, or is it far more than marginal?