Which Memory

Veanie · 4 Oct 2006 at 08:49

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-8500C5

Or

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C3

For a Asus P5WDG2-WS Professional running a X6800 processor ?

The 8500 obviously has the benefit for being tested to 1066Mhz but this whole system is going to be run at stock speeds. So would the 8500 memory run at 1066Mhz as stock ?

If not I am presuming that the 6400 memory would be faster owing to its lower latencies ?

ReeceKB · 4 Oct 2006 at 10:42

y r u gona run it at stock :confused:

Veanie · 4 Oct 2006 at 11:02

That wasnt the question I asked...

The spec of the machine I am building will not require oc'ing for performance and I am not an oc'er. Doesnt interest me in seeing how far I can push components.

I simply want to build the fastest or the nearest to fastest stock machine available.

Minstadave · 4 Oct 2006 at 11:33

You won't get any gains running at stock by buying higher rated RAM, just get some PC5300 or PC6400 at the very most.

Veanie · 4 Oct 2006 at 11:47

Sorry perhaps I am not asking the question clearly enough, Ill try again.

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-8500C5 TwinX is rated to run at 1066Mhz.

The mobo I am buying runs at 1066FSB.

However the Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C3 TwinX costs £40 more than the 8500. Is this due to its lower latencies, despite the fact it will only run at 800Mhz stock ?

Which will give the better stock performance ? 8500 or 6400 ?

rangor gubbins · 4 Oct 2006 at 15:13

if you're running your conroe at stock speeds i don't think you need anything like PC6400 and PC8500 would be massive overkill.
IIRC, divide the conroes "quad pumped" FSB by 4 to get the actual MHz needed for running at stock (1066/4=266Mhz). To give you the speed of RAM you need x2 (266*2=533Mhz), which for DDR2 means PC4200.
Now i'm not 100% certain about all this, so i wouldn't buy anything until someone who knows more can confirm that.

oh, and yes the reason the PC6400 is more expensive than the PC8500 is the faster latencies. I think that for DDR2 real world performance is affected more by FSB speed than latencies, so unless you got money to burn i would go for the cheapest RAM that suits your needs i.e. cheap DDR2 PC4200