Is Ram All That Important?

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alexsabree

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Ok im building a $2000 gaming rig and so far ive got most of everything nailed down except my ram..

Ive never really had nice "gaming ram" ive always had DDR and its always been cheap.

I will be upgrading to DDR2 800 because I am planning on getting the EVGA 680i motherboard coupled with the C2D e6000

Now heres the question, when buying ram with better timings and "ECC".... is it worth it, whats the difference?

Will it make my fps go up noticeably or will it just make my games load slightly faster?

Ive never seen a review on ram showing fps difference in games so im not sure what the advantedge is about getting expensive ram

Thanks,
Alexsabree
 
i dont THINK it will increase your fps, at least noticeably. programs will possibly load faster.
as far as i know, the benefit of expensive ram is the overclocking ability.
ie, i can run my xms @ 440mhz 4-4-4-12 (and it is still possible to raise frequency more and still maintain the timings)
so, if i had cheap ram, i would (probably) not be able to run it at that high, or higher, frequency without loosening the timings to 5-5-5-15 or 18.
now with that moster of an overclocking cpu, i don't think you have to get like the "best ram ever made", unless you want to seriously surpass its (the ram's) rated speed. you can get some decent ddr2-800 and set your divider at 1:1, put your fsb to 400+ (which i believe it will reach easily) and your ram will run at its rated speed, no problem. if you are going to try to surpass 400+ on fsb and still try to maintain the 1:1 ratio, then i would suggest, yes, some GOOD overclocking ram. i don't have a c2d, but from what i have heard, the higher end crucial or geil work really well with them.
i love my corsair xms, and would normally suggest it...but i have read it has problems with the 680i board.
good luck!
 
I don't believe it makes much of a difference until you really get into overclokcing as you've got to have good ram to do that. I don't overclock so I just buy a good stick off of the motherboard's approved memory list. Just make sure you do that to ensure it's a good brand and is support by the motherboard's manufacturer for use.
 
Alexsabree, clean out the PM box man, I was going to reply to the PM 5 minutes after I received it, but your box was full.

As for the memory, the timings don't affect performance very much, although the effect is there. If I were to guess, I would say that the difference between 4-4-4-12 and 5-5-5-15 would be around 20Mhz from the memory. So when your memory is going to go from a stock of 266Mhz up to it's spec. of 400Mhz, the timings would be worth about 1/6 of the performance increase. You decide if that's too much, or too little. Although it may just be a moot point for you, seeing as you're never going to run your memory at over it's spec. of 400Mhz (4.5Ghz E6600, anyone??). The G.Skill you picked is great, its cheap memory with good 4-4-4-12 timings.
 
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