Upgrading RAM with Q6600

CHokKA

CHokKA

CHokKA

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Hey everyone

I've just been having a look at this, puzzling it out, and wanted to see what others thought about this option. I want to put 8GB RAM in my PC, which runs a Q6600 on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P (currently 4GB RAM). It supports DDR2 only. Now, running the numbers, it is actually roughly the same price for me to purchase a new LGA775 mobo (eg the Gigabyte G41MT-S2P for £39 on OcUK), and then an 8GB DDR3 kit, instead of purchasing an 8GB kit for my current mobo. I have 4 1GB sticks of OCZ PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC so I can't just add another 4GB. Am I crazy for thinking about essentially upgrading to a better DDR3 mobo, with DDR3 whilst still keeping my Q6600? The Q6600 is still an absolutely great CPU and has given me many years of good use, so I don't feel it needs to go at all. I want to upgrade the RAM in preparation for SW:The Old Republic at the end of December.

All comments welcome. Cheers for reading :)
 
I faced a similar dilema recently, and what I did was swap my GA-P35-DS3R for a GA-P35C-DS3R which has 6 DIMM slots. 4 of them are DDR2 and 2 are DDR3. I put 2 x 4gb dimms in the DDR3 slots. It was essentially a free upgrade since I sold the old board for the same as what I bought the P35C version. There was some controvesy as to whether the board supported 8gb DDR3. I think that's because at the time it was made they officially spec'd it as "compatible with 4gb ddr3" because that was the most available at the time (2 x 2gb DIMMS) to officially test with. Now we have 4gb DIMMs I can assure you 8gb does work.

The way the price of ram is at the moment, if you want to get just one last upgrade out of 775 (I have considered this myself) you want to be looking at the fact that ram is dirt cheap at the moment and is only going to go one way next year imo, and that's up vastly. DDR3 can't really get any cheaper. So now is a good time to grab 16gb of DDR3 for as little as £70. You can then pair it with some very specific 775 boards which actually do support 16gb of DDR3. I find these boards are rare as rocking horse pooh and hard to come by. Sometimes you see them for sale on ebay, but people also want them for the same reason and they tend to go for quite a lot, sometimes a ton.

DDR3 P45 boards that support crossfire and DDR3 16gb:

Gigabyte:
GA-EP45T-EXTREME
GA-EP45T-DS3R
GA-EP45T-USB3P
GA-EP45T-UD3P

Asus:
P5Q3
P5Q3 Deluxe


Hope this helps. :)
 
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