I need more ram for bf2 but tight budget....

[Orion_AurA]

Ok, so here is the deal. For christmas I bought a eVGA 7800 GT and am using the free mobo they gave me with it (which for the most part is perfect for all my needs). Now, the 7800 gave me very good performance in HL2 and Doom3 but for bf2 (which is my main game that I play) it can not play on high settings. Simple reason, lack of ram. (correct me if Im wrong) Here are my comp stats:

Athlon 64 3500+ (stock speed)
1GB DDR33 Valueshit
120GB Hitachi 7200 rpm (only makes my ram prob worse as reading from the harddrive is death)
eVGA 7800 GT (pride and joy... OC)
Audigy 2 ZS Gamer (too bad it doesnt work with bf2 lol)

Ok, so I clearly need to fix this ram prob. Only thing is, after a 7800 GT I dont really have too much money. However, I can fork over 160$ at most. These are some kits which I am looking at:


OCZ good stuff, cept it is 220 without the 40$ rebate...
Cheap 156$ for 2gb set... adata=european company :S
Patriots for 155$...

Ok... so finnaly the question, is OCZ ram worth the bother if im not going to overclock that much? The extra 40$ really does put me into a pinch so dont know.... Remember, this is mostly for bf2. Thanks for any responses and sry for the wordy thread

 

[wxt38]

if you're not going to overclock that much, get the patroit.

 

[BillGates]

I would get the OCZ if you can scrape up some more money.

 

[wxt38]

if he's not an extreme overclocker, why buy an expensive one with better timing. here's another idea why not get four 512mb sticks. greater bandwith.

 

[Vybuni]

Lol DDR33. That sucks.

Get the OCZ. If you can't fork over the $40 at the start, then get the Patriot. One word about mail in rebates is send them in the minute you get your merchandise.

Better timings = better performance
4 sticks of 512MB RAM does not give better bandwidth. Two 1GB sticks in dual channel is better. Very few motherboards support dual channel with 4 sticks.

 

[wxt38]

Very few motherboards support dual channel with 4 sticks.

lots motherboards do. for instance ABIT KN8 ultra,

 

[Vybuni]

Only the high end motherboards do.

 

[Orion_AurA]

lol, I meant DDR333, ddr33 wouldnt run windows lol. Anyways, Im really a noob when it comes to ram so can someone explain to me what the whol deal is with the timings? I kinda understand the whole thing with cas latency but Im not sure what the performance difference would be for both. (its 3.0 latency for the patriot and 2.0 for the ocz) And one more thing, Im not afraid to overclock, its just I have zero experience overclocking mem and from what I understand, mem OCs dont increase game performance that much... Thanks for the responses, appreciated as always. ^_^

Oh and just to explain why I have ddr 333, its cause they are back from when I had a 2200+ and a soyo kt400 dragon and back than ddr 400 wasnt a standard yet lol.

 

[efd753]

Get some value ram. forget about that ocz u wont get any perfomance from overcloacking ram and cpu other then loading the games a little faster. dont waste your money.

 

[Orion_AurA]

Value ram 2gb sets are ony 20$ cheaper than the patriots.... not worth the downgrade imo...