Quick RAM Opinion

enigmo

enigmo

enigmo

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Joined
3 Jan 2007
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462
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London
Just after a quick straw-poll:
Will I see any difference in an E8500 based gaming rig if I bump it from 6GB RAM to 8GB RAM. All sticks would be DDR2 6400, chip moderately overclocked to 3.8GHz ish.
 
how have you got the 6Gb configured? your cpu needs a dual channel kit, so if your using 3X2GB sticks then it wont be running at maximum.

if its 2X2gb and 2X1gb then thats ok.
 
Currently 2x2GB and 2x1GB for 6 total. I have 2x2GB spare and was trying to decide if I should bump my gaming rig to 8, but if I'll see no difference I'll keep it for my server.
 
i have been toying with the idea of boostign my ddr2 specs and ity's simply not worth it, put the £40 toward a new rig. you can get corsair xms 3 12800c9 for less than £40 right now and taht would blow your 8gb of ddr2 6400 away.

i mean you can probably get a ddr3 mobo and keep your prcessor for £40-60 if you shop around so for a small 80-100 investment you can speed up your pc more than that 2gb of ram would.
 
TwsT:
True, but I'm in a bit of an odd half-way house seeing as I have a 2500K coming, 8GB DDR3 and a 1155 cooler already here, and an Asus board being swapped out after the recall. This is purely for my current setup and just happened to have had 2x2GB DDR2 drop in my lap for free :) Just wondering what would make the best use of it.
 
stulid said:
how have you got the 6Gb configured? your cpu needs a dual channel kit, so if your using 3X2GB sticks then it wont be running at maximum.
Click to expand...

Not quite my friend.. It only requires 2 modules to activate dual channel mode.. but the RAM will still operate at the correct speed albeit with reduced bandwidth..

for example,

PC2-6200 has a peak transfer rate of 6.4GB/s. In dual channel mode this is "theoretically" doubled to 12.8GB/s.. but it still runs at 800MHz
 
I also considered creating a RAM disk and moving the page file to there, but again an SSD would be a much greater performance boost, and I'll probably need 4GB rather than 2 for a reasonable RAM disk so overall would actually be reducing my usable RAM to 4GB.
Since I won't actually see a real perfomance bump without jumping through hoops I'll just leave it. 6GB is more than enough as stands. But ta all anyway :)
 
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