My ram setup for best compatability and performance

[blayez]

I have 4 slots for ram on my system

At the moment slots 1 and 3 are filled with 1 gig sticks of DDR2 667MHz SDRAM (Dual Interleaved)

I came across this sweet deal with an awesome Mail In Rebate on newegg.com:
Newegg.com - Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

I want all 4 sticks of my ram to work for the best performance possible. I don't want one stick bringing down the performance of the other 3. I wouldn't mind purchasing 4 sticks of this same Crucial Ballistix ram if it would give me a better performance increase than 2 of my old kind and 2 of the new. (40 bucks for 4 sticks, not bad at all)

ALSO, would it be better for me to just replace my x2 1gig sticks of DDR2 667 mhz ram with another 2 gigs of a faster type? Im not sure of the computer science behind it, but people tell me adding another gig of ram to 2 gigs will stop allowing the first 2 to work "dual channel", this possibly slowing your system instead of the opposite. If you have 4 gigs, is that the same as 2 dual channel kits, or will they all work independant?

I have also been told that I might want to look at upgrading to DDR3 (which is somewhat costly). How does DDR2 compare to DDR3? price and performance wise

And, does anyone have any idea exactly how much Ram Aoc, Lotro, Crysis, etc uses??

 

[alexsabree]

All three of those games do fine with just 2gb. Your computer should do fine with mixed brands of ram, but you will not be able to run dual channel mode. The only time you might notice any difference is when you look at your 3dmark score and it is down by 100 points or something.

No frame rate decrease there.

DDR3 is a joke right now, don't even take a look at it unless you feel like throwing money down the drain to fool yourself in believing you've got the best computer in the world.

Wait a while for it to become affordable and actually useful.

 

[blayez]

Ok. I spent the last few hours looking at exactly how much ram Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings Online eat up (what im trying to run on high settings).

When I am just sitting at my desktop, nothing opened, I have about 1.5-1.6gigs of my 2 gigs available for use.

When playing AoC and Lotro in a heavy area, i run anywhere from .4-.5gigs left available.. so they are using about 1 gig of ram or so each

Getting an extra 2 gigs of ram to make it 4 would have little to no improvement at all on these games. What I think might be best for performance (asking you guys your opinion) is to just get replace the x2 1 gig sticks of DDR2 667 ram I have and buy another Dual channel pair that is around 800 or the 1066 even.

These would be a bit more pricey, but I do alot of gaming and I think faster ram would eliminate a lot of my texture popping and load times for terrain and landscapes.

 

[thirdshiftdj]

I switched from 2 to 4gb and I will never go back. Everything loads faster especially games. Its also easier to oc 2x2gb sticks then 4x1gb sticks. It puts extra strain on the NB. You would also need to get Vista 64. So if you can afford and do need it I say go for it. You will notice a difference.

 

[blayez]

I was just looking at 2x2gb sticks on newegg.com and then read your post thirdshiftdj. It seems to me that 2 would put less strain than having to have everything spread across 4. Im still planning to run 32-bit xp for now, which would get me around 3.5 outta the 4 gigs I have (will upgrade to Vista sometime in the future, im sure). I don't know of any game that makes me run anywhere over 3 gigs of ram, including whats running on the desktop.

Anyway:
Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!
thats what newegg offers as far as 2x2 sticks. I want to get a good et for gaming but Im not sure how much priceerformance increase Im goign to see between 667,800,and 1066 ram. Could someone explain to me more about the Cas latency, voltage, and Timing? I am using a nForce 4 SLI Intel edition chipset for checking for capability.

What would you suggest?

 

[thirdshiftdj]

CAS latency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Google if you can.

 

[blayez]

So what would you recommend out of the 2x2gb sticks for gaming?

 

[kobe24]

if u have money, the best is gskill hz's ddr800 2x2gb, but if there to much get corsair xms2 ddr800 2x2gb. or even the gskill hk's or nq's

 

[blayez]

Newegg.com - XFX PVT96GYDF4 GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

I would be very interested in buying 2 of these for SLI.

How would I go about insuring that my power supply is enough to support both cards? And how do you setup SLI?

Also, is there really that much of a difference between all of the manufacturer's cards that are making 9600 GT, other than the fact that they could have overclocked them?

 

[veg1992]

SLI is pretty easy to setup, first get an SLI Board and a PSU that can handle it

then pretty much assemble the PC and put both video cards in like you do normally, but then you put the SLI bridge which connects the Cards together, finally you get the Forceware Drivers and enable SLI

How to Build a PC - Video Guide to Building a PC - Part 2

the very last part shows how to enable SLI