Your thoughts about a mem. spec.

[jambus]

Got 4 Gb 800MHz Corsair DDR2 4-4-4-12

Upgrading my system, memory I'm going for is

3 Gb 1600 MHz Corsair DDR3, triple channel 9-9-9-24

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-170-CS

What do you reckon the performance increase will be in a percentage, I'm not expecting any to be honest, it's just I'm splashing out elsewhere in the system, so this is going to be my "bottleneck" as it were, going for a 920 i7, got 2x280 for SLI, and my budget is only going to stretch for this RAM. Do you reckon it'll cause problems? If so I suppose I could stretch the budget by around 40 pounds tops. What're you're thoughts on this? Feel free to spec. some different RAM =D Help appreciated X

 

[gurusan]

Well 1 thing i7 doesn't really lack at all is memory performance, so super high frequencies and tight timings are not going to do much for overall system performance, just benchmarks.... so I'd go for a cheap 1333MHz 6gb kit, it's a lot more money but 3gb just isn't quite enough these days in my opinion....

 

[jambus]

Not even if it's twice the freq. and triple channel as my previous mem? Also, I'm probably only going to go with 32 bit XP for a while to come, surely seeing as this only sees just over 3 Gb it won't make any difference? If anything I will see a marginal improvement?

 

[gurusan]

XP 32bit :/

And the performance increase you will see will be due to more than just the memory. You won't notice a difference between 1333 and 1600 in an i7 setup unless benchmarking.