Ram importance?

M

Matthew22

New Member
I was just wondering, how much difference is there between DDR2 800 and lets say DDR3 1333?
is this something that will help you move a game up from medium settings to high or is it literally milliseconds that someone not measuring wouldn't notice?
 
NO, you would need a better graphics card, like mine below or similar, to improve the settings in game. Although i am not saying you would not need the better ram, since any lag in game could be due to lack of RAM or its low frequency.
 
So what's the difference between DDR, DDR2 and DDR3? Does it really improves performances as promised? Can the difference seen so obvious?

Few years ago, I bought PC with DDR1.. 500MB DDR1. It was running XP. Just within one year, DDR2 became common. I thought to myself, "I should have waited longer a bit."

Now, DDR2 is still common and we also getting nearer to DDR3...

My friend has Vista PC with 2GB DDR2 and it is sometimes slow and even lag. Sometimes when I use, I actually feel no difference in terms of speed or performance. It's just I think his PC can transfer files faster a bit than mine.

So the question is, if I have upgraded my PC from DDR1 to DDR2.. or if it were my choice.. would it be worth it? :)
 
Well I actually just ordered a 460GTX OC and a new Athlon X4 940 3.0Ghz but the memory I have is 4 years old, most likely 333mhz, 600 or 800, and I ordered another 2GB of DDR2 800. since DDR3 seems to be even cheaper now and I had to get a new motherboard anyway, I was wondering if I made the right choice, and if not, how significant is it in real life, including gaming?
 
ErnestHolmes said:
So what's the difference between DDR, DDR2 and DDR3? Does it really improves performances as promised? Can the difference seen so obvious?

Few years ago, I bought PC with DDR1.. 500MB DDR1. It was running XP. Just within one year, DDR2 became common. I thought to myself, "I should have waited longer a bit."

Now, DDR2 is still common and we also getting nearer to DDR3...

My friend has Vista PC with 2GB DDR2 and it is sometimes slow and even lag. Sometimes when I use, I actually feel no difference in terms of speed or performance. It's just I think his PC can transfer files faster a bit than mine.

So the question is, if I have upgraded my PC from DDR1 to DDR2.. or if it were my choice.. would it be worth it? :)
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Like the transition from DDR to DDR2, DDR3 can have higher capacity chips, so you can get larger capacity sticks of memory. The clocks of DDR3 are higher than that of DDR2, however, again, like DDR to DDR2, the timings are higher, so the performance difference isn't that great, until you go to 1600MHz +, but even then, the performance difference isn't all THAT noticable. The only real difference is that you can get more memory, and can use said memory with newer technology, like i series processors/AM3, which only support DDR3.

So, in summary:

In terms of Capacity:

DDR3>DDR2>DDR

In terms of Speed:

DDR3>=DDR2>=DDR

Unless you get higher clocked, low timings DDR2, it is the same speed as DDR, and likewise for DDR3 to DDR2

But the big one is for technology. You can't use DDR2 or DDR memory on a 1156, 1366 or AM3 motherboard because the processors that use those sockets have integrated memory controllers, so will only be compatible with certain types of memory. But even then there are exceptions, because some AM3 CPUs have both DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers, so that they work in AM2+ and AM3 boards
 
Matthew22 said:
Thanks a lot for the explanation. I gather then that my memory isn't a problem at all not to mention a possible bottle neck. right? I just want to be really sure.
according to AMD's web site Athlon X3 and X4 both support DDR2, thank god for that.
http://www.amd.com/uk/products/desk...ocessor-model-numbers-feature-comparison.aspx
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Memory isn't the bottleneck, the bottleneck is the hard drive in every system, and of course it depends on what you are doing, because some applications will be very CPU intensive, but hardly use memory or video card, some will need a lot of video performance, some will need everything to be good, but it is very, very rare that memory will be a bottleneck issue.

The only time it will happen, is if you don't have enough, and it is getting full, like trying to play the latest games with only 1GB of memory
 
that's awesome to know, thanks! could I ask you about the hard drive? when you say it's a bottle neck do you mean I would need a better hard drive in general or just a solid state for the demanding operations that are important to me?
 
Matthew22 said:
that's awesome to know, thanks! could I ask you about the hard drive? when you say it's a bottle neck do you mean I would need a better hard drive in general or just a solid state for the demanding operations that are important to me?
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If you could take the hard drive out of the equation, your computer and all programs would be just about instant boot, instant save, instant shut down etc, but because of the hard drive being mechanical, it slows everything down, so you are limited in that sense by the speed of your drive.

Now you mentioned solid state drives, which are much, much quicker (in general) than hard drives because of no moving parts, everything is on NAND flash memory chips, and so you see much faster boot and load tiems, because that bottleneck is reduced immensely. Even a solid state drive though at a couple hundred MB/s isn't the same sort of speed as your CPU and video card, so it is still a bottleneck, but is much less so than a hard drive is.

When talking about boot times, it is also, to a point, every single motherboard that is a bottleneck, because of the BIOS. A BIOS is such old technology and wasn't designed to last this long, so time that you sit there waiting for your system to POST and load everything from the BIOS is extremely inneficient by todays standards. This is being rectified, and will probably be completely obsolete in new motherboards in a couple of years because of the introduction of UEFI

For the sake of simplicity, UEFI is an updated version of the BIOS which is much faster and more efficient. It has faster boot times, can utilise larger storage drives (BIOS can only use up to 2TB drives, the size of which we have hit now), and can have networking before you even get into an OS
 
Wow, I guess 5 years from now systems will be monsters of performance, and I wonder how these changes will open doors for future leaps in computer tech. it's really interesting, thanks for explaining it!
 
Matthew22 said:
Wow, I guess 5 years from now systems will be monsters of performance, and I wonder how these changes will open doors for future leaps in computer tech. it's really interesting, thanks for explaining it!
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Look at computers 5 years ago, and then look at them now. 10 years from now we will be saying wow, computers will be monsters in the future, when you can pick up a cheap i7 CPU and GTX580
 
I know I thought of that, but it true any regular dual core is super for web browsing and stuff while Pentium 4 was never smooth for me.
 
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