What Ram?

tommy trouble · 21 Oct 2007 at 19:14

If i'm not going to do any overclocking, what ram should i aim for? Based round a Q6600, abit ip35 mobo and 8800gtx card when they come out. I was thinking about going for 4 gig of the stuff.

Thanks

dr. sarf · 21 Oct 2007 at 19:21

Are you gonna be using Vista x64? Remember you'll need an x64 OS for all that memory to be addressed. Course you could choose XP x64.
I've been happy with Crucial RAM - performs very well and the tracer version looks ace in the case.

tommy trouble · 21 Oct 2007 at 19:22

Yep will be using vista 64, are you using the 8500?

dr. sarf · 21 Oct 2007 at 19:31

Sadly not, my budget wouldnt stretch quite that far.

That would have meant an extra £80 on the build, which I chose to pile into my 8800GTS instead. Got it overclocked nicely though

Pretty sure it'd push more than 740 but my CPU says "no more, thanks"! lol

Cob · 21 Oct 2007 at 19:56

If not overclocking then any PC2-5300 will do.

Either two pairs of this or a single pair of this.

Tho if you can get this for around the same price as it is this w-end then go for it.

tommy trouble · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:22

So does the 8500 or 6400 ect define how overclockable the ram is? The budget is not really an issue tbh, well upto a point. i don't want to go over about £1400

dr. sarf · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:47

Go for the 8500 then, based on the GTX and Q6600, you should have plenty of money to do that.

The number denotes the RAMs speed, but they can both be overclocked.

Cob · 21 Oct 2007 at 20:52

But PC8500 is pretty pointless unless you overclock the FSB past ~475mhz, and even then the PC6400 Ballistix will do that easily.

If I was building a Q6600 based system that wasn't going to be overclocked then I wouldn't be looking past PC2-5300, unless the PC2-6400 was the same price.

And you have to bear in mind that a Q6600 actually only needs PC2-4200 if it's not being overclocked.

stickroad · 21 Oct 2007 at 21:22

dr. sarf said:
Go for the 8500 then, based on the GTX and Q6600, you should have plenty of money to do that.
The number denotes the RAMs speed, but they can both be overclocked.

Not really, 8500 rated memory is stupidly pointless to get.

Its the chips that the memory uses which most of the time determines how well they overclock.

This memory is a steel of a price, fantastic.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-019-GS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=813

It will take your Quad all the way upto 3.6GHz.

If you wanted to go higher than that then either go for this stuff:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-088-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=144

or something like this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-058-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=813

tommy trouble · 21 Oct 2007 at 23:45

Heh thanks guys, i think i need to read up and try and understand the relationship between the different components a bit better! And understand the pros and cons of oc'ing, i meen on paper by oc'ing the system looks awsome, but does the performance really reflect that, and will i notice enough difference to make it worth doing?

thehmsjellyfish · 22 Oct 2007 at 00:46

tommy trouble said:
Heh thanks guys, i think i need to read up and try and understand the relationship between the different components a bit better! And understand the pros and cons of oc'ing, i meen on paper by oc'ing the system looks awsome, but does the performance really reflect that, and will i notice enough difference to make it worth doing?

Yes notice a big difference from stock speeds.

MumboJumbo · 22 Oct 2007 at 00:46

tommy trouble said:
Heh thanks guys, i think i need to read up and try and understand the relationship between the different components a bit better! And understand the pros and cons of oc'ing, i meen on paper by oc'ing the system looks awsome, but does the performance really reflect that, and will i notice enough difference to make it worth doing?

yes and no. Ovreclocking a graphics card in a game like oblivion will see quite a few evtra FPS's added on. of corse if your FPS is going from 100 to 120 then you wont notice it. But sometimes ti can drop quite low in that game with all the eye candy. The difference between 25fps and 50fps is quite a good leap from oveclocking.

You wouldn't notice such an increase by ovreclocking your cpu as its not a cpu intence game. But in other games such as supreme comander youll notice a huge increase.

Increasing a quad core to 3.2ghz is a good performance increase. i doubt youll see much more if you ovreclock it to 3.5ghz for example as most games are cpu limited. In other words, the Graphics card benefits more from it once your cpu is overclocked past a certain point as the graphics card is the limiting factor on your performance in game.

Also im confident you wouldn't notice any difference from overclocking ram. 4gb of ram will speed up your game loads. But 4gb at 800mhz will make no difference if it was running at 1200mhz. Ram does not tend to be the limiting factor in a pc unless you ahve very little of it. Ad even with 2gb i doubt youll notice a difference between 800mhz and 1200mhz

Babbled a bit. overall yes

tommy trouble · 22 Oct 2007 at 08:45

Thanks 8igDave, i see what you meen. i guess i'll build the pc at the end of this week then see if it struggles anyware....

gurusan · 22 Oct 2007 at 08:58

1 vote here for 4x1gb 5300 ballistix!

MumboJumbo · 22 Oct 2007 at 14:14

tommy trouble said:
Thanks 8igDave, i see what you meen. i guess i'll build the pc at the end of this week then see if it struggles anyware....

What cpu are you thinking about getting? i would definitly overclock a 8800 as its so easy all you do is download a program and moev some sliders up and you will see a good performanec boost.

With a cpu id take a duel core to 3.5ghz and probably a Q6600 to 3.2. But id suggest you get a Q6600. Games like alan wake are being built on a quad core. I think duel cores will suffer in that game. Of corse they will make it so it runs well. but i recon the physics engine will hit the duel cores quite hard and they may even be the limiting factor before the graphics card.

gurusan said:
1 vote here for 4x1gb 5300 ballistix!

Costs of other memory manafactures such as geil and ocz mean its not worth buying ballistix any more. Yes ballistix will overclock to 1200mhz if your lucky. But it will more likely die every few months. The difference in game performance as i stated above will be minute when comparing it to the stock speeds of geil and ocz and if you really want you can overclock them up to 950mhz.