Some nooby questions...

Gantoris

Gantoris

Gantoris

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Hi, im new to the forums but been saving up to try my hand at building a PC for the first time and am really liking Overclockers and gonna give you guys a try.

I have a reasonable enough grasp about whats good and whats not with most components but there's lots about RAM and motherboards that confuse me so i thought id throw a few questions out there see if you guys can help.

Firstly im interested almost completely in gaming and what i want to know is this, is it worth getting 8gb of ram instead of just 4gb? A lot of my friends say 4gb is just fine, will having more actually result in better game performance and frame rates? Frame rates is whats important to me which is why SSD's don't interest me, im not paying £200-300 just so windows will load 10 seconds faster and the 3 games i can actually install on the damn thing load 5 seconds faster if there's no actual increase in the performance once its loaded.

Secondly for neatness sake id prefer to have one or two 4gb sticks instead of two or four 2gb sticks but the fact there's so few 4gb stick options on this or any website i have seen makes me wonder. Are there any pros/cons or are they exactly the same, also this dual/single channel thing confuses me a little bit for example this is the ram im looking at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-287-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat= if i were to get two of those would there be any problems because it says single channel? Also 1333mhz seems to be the best i can find for a single 4gb stick does that really make much difference as all the AMD motherboards only seem to support higher with overclocking anyway and i dont know if i will bother OCing the ram. Also what does the timings mean "CAS 9-9-9-24" i have no clue what in the hell that supposed to be, is higher or lower numbers good and what does it do?

Thirdly and im sorry if this is the wrong thread for this question but i thought id just get it all out in one post, this is the motherboard im looking at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-283-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782 it has all the connections and features i want at a nice price, what is the difference with that and the more expensive 880s and 890s. Again my focus hear is on game performance primarily frame rates, is it worth me paying £30-40 more on a 890gx? Also and sorry if this is especially nooby but i thought i should check, some of the Asus motherboards have only Sata 6gb connections these are backwards compatible with Sata 3gb HDDs and Optical drives ect arnt they?

Thanks in advance for your time, look forward to someone setting my mind at ease :).
 
Hi there,

+1 to what nkata said above. If you are mainly interested in gaming then 2x2GB is the way to go at the moment - it is more than enough memory for playing all modern games and won't cost an arm and a leg.

You could go for two of those 4GB modules and it should run fine in dual channel mode when inserted into the correct slots on a dual channel enabled motherboard. However, you are paying a price premium and you won't be buying a matched set. Combine that with not requiring 8GB for gaming - then I wouldn't suggest buying 8GB. If you want higher framerates - the extra £80 would be much better spent on a faster graphics card.

The main difference between the 870 motherboard you link to and the 890GX board is crossfireX (running two AMD graphics cards together to achieve a large performance boost compared to just one card). The 890GX (and 890FX) boards are able to run CrossfireX (x8x8 or x16x16 speed, respectively), however the 870 board does not support this technology - so you are limited to using a single primary graphics card.

Finally, as for memory timings, lower is better. This is worth a read.
 
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Thank you all for your replies, has been very helpful ill stick with 4gb for now as i guess its probably the easiest thing to upgrade later if needed anyways but what confuses me is why people buy 2x2gb matched sets. Why would you take that over a single 4gb stick what is the advantage and why does that seem to be what everyone wants, this is what confuses me cause it seems so much more sensible to me to just get a single 4gb stick. Hell the 4gb stick i linked is actually nearly a tenner cheaper than the same make 2x2gb sticks, is there some advantage to getting 2x2gb sticks that im not seeing?

As for the motherboard crossfire is a little above my price range, i plan to get a single HD 5850 so that being said would getting the 870 be fine? would there be any performance increase from upgrading to an 880 or 890? The wikipedia article linked while appreciated made my brain hurt, i just want to know if it will effect performance of gaming.

Thanks again for the help, sorry if these are noobie questions.
 
The benefit of running two 2GB sticks instead of one 4GB stick is that the 2x2GB arrangement will run in dual channel mode, while the single stick can only run in single channel mode. Dual channel model has twice the memory bandwidth compared to single channel mode, so if your board supports it (the 870 certainly does) then definitely run memory in dual channel mode or you may experience lower performance in some applications due to reduced memory bandwidth.

If you are not concerned about crossfire then the 870 is fine, your framerates in games will be largely unaffected by the cheaper chipset/board. However, if you are spending £200 on a graphics card, you may want to spend the extra £19 on a crossfire capable 890GX board like this, just in case you want to slot in a second 5850 at some point in the future.
 
Ahhh ok i understand now, thanks i guess ill get a 2x2gb matched set then :)

One final thing about the motherboards however is every single AMD one ive seen seems to cap at 1333mhz with 1866mhz only if you OC it, how would this effect me if i for example buy a 2x2gb 1600mhz matched set? even the processor im planning on http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-253-AM says "DDR3-1333 support" in its features so i was just going to get 1333mh RAM for simplicities sake. Would you guys recommend getting 1600mhz (the cost seems to be exactly the same), would it increase performence and would it take any shenanigans to get running at its best?
 
With an AMD system, you won't get much of a performance boost going from 1333MHz to 1600MHz, but bear in mind that you can simply run 1600MHz RAM at 1333MHz speed if you wish - so go with what is cheapest.

This stuff looks like a good deal at the moment.
 
Thats exactly the RAM i was just looking at :) yeh from what you guys have said that looks awesome, good timings and 1600mhz is the make any good tho? The only RAM makers ive really heard of enough to trust are Corsair and Kingston. If i bought that RAM and the motherboard you linked with the CPU i linked how hard would it be to get the ram running at the advertised 1600mhz and would bothering to do that give me much of a performance boost? Is there some problem with AMD CPUs and using more than 1333mhz?
 
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