2GB of ram (1 Viewer)

[Scott L]

With HL2 being released I recently bought 1gb of Corsair XMS 2-3-3-6 DDR400 ram to replace a gig of Crucial DDR333. Didn't see a huge increase in performance whatsoever, both in real world and in Aquamark3. So out of curiosity I threw in all 4 sticks into the motherboard's ram slots.

I was wide-eyed when WinXP SP2 seemed to load up faster than a fresh OS install with no service packs included. Things like Windows Media Encoder which was a drag when switching settings around was flying by as fast as Vdub. Firefox also loaded extremely fast when first opened. So yes there is a noticeable difference after 1GB and if you knew already shame on you for not sharing!

And for overclockers I'm running all 4 sticks at a 5:4 ratio with 2.5-3-3-6 timings (2.8C @ 3.4). No crashes yet.

 

[Mike Fassler]

the difference between ddr333 and ddr400(especially in gaming performance) is very minimal without overclocks and even so tight memory timings dont always equal performance. but now you have ddr333 and ddr400
which usually means that the ddr400 will be downclocked to 333.
of course that just means yer not using the hardrive to swap at all which is alot faster, hence the faster load times. even with 1 gig of ram you'd never use all that memory, but having more certainly doesnt hurt.


/me goes back to Half Life 2

 

[Scott L]

Thanks for the info. As for being downclocked you can set what speed your ram runs in the bios. I set them to run at 193mhz with the 5:4 ratio, which is closer to DDR400 than 333. Wish I fooled with that setting earlier since the Crucial seems to be overclocking just fine.

I was told the same thing about the timings before I got the ram but was just surprised that I saw a difference, especially for loading SP2.

 

[Mike Fassler]

Crucial is pretty decent but no where near as good as the Corsair you got. RAM is always kind of a funny topic in computer world, cause thers alot of variables in terms of performance and what not, but as long as its doing what you want it too, thats what matters.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

after living with 512MB for so long, i am jealous

CJ

 

[Chris Bardon]

And here I thought that 512 Mb would be kind of a plateau. I notice that there's still a lot of systems selling with 256 Mb actually.

If I ever feel the need to upgrade my PC again, I'll probably go the 2 Gb route. Half life 2 has me tempted, but I realized that the $700 it'd cost in hardware upgrades would be better spent on xbox upgrades.

 

[Mike Fassler]

they sell em with only 256 megs cause thats how they can get you to spend more money, ram is one of the least expensive components so they can make more money sellin it seperately.
512 is about the minimum for a gaming machine nowadays,with 1 gig being the standard for hardcore gamers and enthusiasts.