Is my RAM holding me back?

[IIDX]

I have this setup:
Asus P4C800 DLX
Sapphire x800 Pro
P4 2.8c Ghz w/ Hyperthreading
and finall, 894 mb DDR ram.

I think my biggest set back to my PC right now is that I have a really terrible RAM configuration.
I have 3 sticks of 256 mb ram, which are pc 2700 x 2, and pc2100 x1, and a pc2100 128 mb stick.

Now I've read around that this means my ram is all limited to pc2100 speed, which is pretty crappy. Should I get rid of it all and buy 2 512 pc3200 ram? (I don't know if I can afford that) or would it be just as fast to dumb the 128 stick and throw in a 512 stick?

Any suggestions on what I should do would be nice, christmas is coming up and I could always ask for RAM from Santa

 

[wazzledoozle]

I have this setup:
Asus P4C800 DLX
Sapphire x800 Pro
P4 2.8c Ghz w/ Hyperthreading
and finall, 894 mb DDR ram.

I think my biggest set back to my PC right now is that I have a really terrible RAM configuration.
I have 3 sticks of 256 mb ram, which are pc 2700 x 2, and pc2100 x1, and a pc2100 128 mb stick.

Now I've read around that this means my ram is all limited to pc2100 speed, which is pretty crappy. Should I get rid of it all and buy 2 512 pc3200 ram? (I don't know if I can afford that) or would it be just as fast to dumb the 128 stick and throw in a 512 stick?

Any suggestions on what I should do would be nice, christmas is coming up and I could always ask for RAM from Santa

Either way, take that PC2100 stick of ram out.

 

[kRaZeD]

get rid of the PC2100 as it REALLY sucks. and the difference between the speed of the RAM and the amount will be almost nothing, if not better performace with less ram that is faster.

In other works (if that didnt make much sense):
Take out the PC2100
Then u have 512mb ram
Which will be faster than the 894mb of ram
And the performance hit from having less ram will be almost nothing.

 

[IIDX]

I gave it a go, took out my two sticks of 2100 ram, which brought me down to 512 of 2700...My score went from
8453 Marks - 3dMark03
8698 Marks - 3dMark03 512 Pc2700

So I went up 245 marks by taking out ram...now don't I feel like a sucker hehe.

Knowing how much ram speed matters, I think I may just scrap my current ram altogether, try to sell it to some friends, and ask for a gig of 3300 or something like that. Hopefully with that and getting a sound card this christmas (using onboard sound), and maybe overclocking my card (hopefully getting the 16 pipes unleashed) I can break 10,000 in 3dmark 03.

Oh wow! I just tested my CS:S benchmark and it used to stay at around 75 FPS no matter what settings I used, but now I just got 90 FPS. This is great. I always thought my computer was great, but now I realize that I knew nothing about RAM, and my ram wasn't even running very well :S I can't wait to see how it goes with 1 gig of fast ram.

 

[OVERKILL]

Its always good to match RAM speed with FSB speed, for example, I have the same board as you, ASUS P4C800DLX, I have a P4 2.8E with the 800Mhz FSB and 1MB L2 Cache, now, to take full advantage of that 800Mhz FSB you have to have both channels of RAM populated with two basically identical PC3200 sticks (DDR400), anything higher is great for overclocking, but if you are not overclocking the PC3200 will do just fine. AND, if you do manage to get PC3200 and decide to later overclock, you can use big copper heat spreaders (like I have) that will allow you to run the RAM a fair bit higher than its rated speed.

Basically, PC2700 in Dual-Channel is OK for 533FSB CPU's on that board, PC2100 in Dual-Channel would be OK for something like a Celeron or a P4 A-series CPU with a 400Mhz FSB but for something with an 800Mhz FSB, you have to use PC3200 (or higher).

Hope that helps.

 

[IIDX]

That deffinitley helps a lot! Thanks.
I think I'm going to ask for 2 512 sticks of pc3200 RAM, and sell off my old RAM.

I am not really interesting in OCing, mostly because it just worries me, and I really can't afford to lose any of my computers components for a few FPS. I like how my computer runs now anyways, I just can't wait to see how great it will be with that gig of 3200 in there.

 

[kRaZeD]

get matched pairs, as in from the same packaging. Sticks of RAM normally come in a plastic (in my experience) container thing. So you need to try and get some from the same box thing. or just ask for matched pairs.

Geil arnt bad. DONT get kingston.

If possible look at the RAM chips and see if they are Hynix or Samsung, as they are top notch chips in my experience. I have some PC3200 that uses Hynix D43 chips, which are rated to PC4400 or something stupid. so im happy.

 

[OVERKILL]

THere is nothing wrong with Kingston I got it cheap, that's why I have it. Samsung is great, so is Infineon, Micron, Mushkin, Kingmax....etc. All good RAM. Your best bet, to guarantee compatibility is to go to your motherboard support page on ASUS's web site, there they have a "qualified vendors list" of compatible RAM for your motherboard, if you use RAM from that list you will have the best results.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Corsair makes very very good high end ram. My Corsair PC2700 XMS can do PC3200 with one hand tied behind its back.

 

[OVERKILL]

True, Corsair is very nice.

 

[IIDX]

Corsair Value Select 512MB PC-3200 DDR400 SDRAM (VS512MB400C3) $109

Sounds good to me. That's Canadian prices by the way.