Is there any need to go greater than 800mhz, or use DDR3?

JohnJSal

JohnJSal

Active Member
I never even realized that there was anything higher than 800 until I started browsing memory on newegg. Obviously, if customizing on Dell's website is the bulk of your experience, you might be led to believe that 800 is top-of-the-line. :)

But is there any need to go beyond 800, even for a moderate gaming PC? I'm wondering about the price/performance difference.

And while I'm talking about memory, is DDR3 even necessary right now? It seems too expensive, but I don't know if the performance justifies that.

Thanks.
 
If I am correct (someone correct me if I'm not), I would be more concerned about your video card and the amount of Random Access Memory you have. The speed of your memory is much less important than the amount. I would have at least 2 gigabytes of memory for most video games nowadays. PC2 6400 speeds aren't much different than PC2 4200 speeds from what I have read.

Double Data Rate 3 memory is too expensive right now compared to the performance it gives.
 
DDR2 800 is fine. I own 1066 (OC'd @ 1205), but I will admit that there isn't a noticable performance difference between the two. DDR3 speeds are faster, but the latencies/timings are much higher. The lower the better w/ regard to latencies. Motherboards that support DDR3 are also limited right now.

I would recommend this: Corsair 2GB
 
Thanks guys! And is there any harm with putting more than 3GB of RAM in right now, given that Windows doesn't seem to recognize any more? I figure if it's cheap enough, I might as well do it now.

But of course, having read that you must use two DIMMs in order to take advantage of dual channel, what does this mean for a system that can't recognize more than 3GB? Do at least 2GB run in dual channel, and then the third DIMM just runs by itself in a single channel?
 
JohnJSal said:
Thanks guys! And is there any harm with putting more than 3GB of RAM in right now, given that Windows doesn't seem to recognize any more? I figure if it's cheap enough, I might as well do it now.
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No harm, but you need a 64 bit OS. No point in installing > 3GB in a 32bit system.

JohnJSal said:
Do at least 2GB run in dual channel, and then the third DIMM just runs by itself in a single channel?
Click to expand...

Yes. That's correct, I believe.
 
mep916 said:
No harm, but you need a 64 bit OS. No point in installing > 3GB in a 32bit system.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I won't bother then. I think any games released to date won't need more than 2GB. And I plan to use XP instead of Vista anyway.
 
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