Is it worth getting more DDR3 RAM now?

[wNotyarD]

See, my brother has the following rig:

AMD FX-8320E Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P 1x8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 CL10 Zotac GTX 1070 Mini Kingston A400 240GB WDC Blue 1TB

I found a new 8GB stick of the same Vengeance 1600CL10 for about 200 BRL (already listing local currency) and I'm kinda willing to gift him that.
If his whole platform was to be upgraded to a new one (say 10th gen i5/Zen 2 R5 or newer) it would cost at least 8 times that value here. I wouldn't splash that cash, much less my brother would be able to do that now.
And in the event he upgrades his rig one day, his current one would probably be handed down to our parents.

So, is it worth it getting him that new 8GB for his FX rig, even now that we're bordering 2023?

 

[Shrek]

My main machine is DDR3; my fallback machines DDR2

If I needed more, I would have upgraded.

 

[wNotyarD]

The 8320 rig inspite using 10+ yo tech is a decent rig still.

It served me very well. The MB+CPU+RAM was mine until 2019 (built myself a R7-2700 rig using the base I still run) and the 1070 I handed down in early 2021. So I know it's limited but still capable. Just stay away from anything requiring AVX2.

Anyways here is something that just appeared.

[FS][US] - SOLD ON FB - Budget Gaming Build Starter Pack

AMD Ryzen 2600 = $70 shipped MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon = $60 shipped Patriot Viper 16 GB (2x8) 3000 MHz CL16 RAM = $25 shipped Bundle it all together for $135

www.techpowerup.com

Any higher being out there is witness that I wish getting second-hand (or even new) hardware with such low prices was possible here.

 

[eidairaman1]

Any higher being out there is witness that I wish getting second-hand (or even new) hardware with such low prices was possible here.

You may want to ask him directly if he would be willing to make an exception

 

[Jism]

A kit of 16GB DDR3 1600+ shoud'nt be the world in pricing.

But it can boost performance and if done right even up to 40% extra and for free. It wont be faster as a recent 2700X or 5800X but it's the cheapest path. 8 core FX still holds up well at 1080p.

 

[eidairaman1]

A kit of 16GB DDR3 1600+ shoud'nt be the world in pricing.

But it can boost performance and if done right even up to 40% extra and for free. It wont be faster as a recent 2700X or 5800X but it's the cheapest path. 8 core FX still holds up well at 1080p.

Thats why I pulled up those vids earlier

 

[Jism]

I never understood the bias towards the FX either. Ive owned the platform after upgrading from a Thuban 1055T at 4.1Ghz. They say the Thuban had better IPC but the FX in my opinion was faster due to it's clockspeeds. Clock for clock yes the thuban might have bin a tad better, but once on 4.5Ghz or above the FX would still be faster day and night. And the additional DDR3 vs DDR2 for example, and the better IMC made it just a better product. FX baddest timing was simply releasing a new 8 core or 8 thread CPU into a market that was fully reliant on games that would be using single core only. Thats why it performed weaker compared to an Intel. But in multithreading, video encoding for example it performed equal or even better then a i7 back in the days.

It had to be OC'ed. But they where made for that due to the longer pipelines and it offered alot of value for your money where Intel CPU's where locked or you had to go for the most expensive model. FX platform could be tricky, but it was'nt the fault of AMD but motherboard makers for applying a crap VRM that would either throttle the CPU or simply chrash the whole thing. Reports of VRM's catching fire after installing a CPU was real. With AM4 however, motherboard makers must comply to AMD's specs. This means that you can buy a 50$ board and run a high end 5950X and even with overclocking. That is the big difference in between the two generations as well.

Yes it was slow on single threading. Thats why i had it oc'ed in the first place at 4.8Ghz with a 300MHz FSB. But it did'nt consume constantly 220W or so. It only consumed that amount of power if you threw a very unrealistic load such as Intel Burntest, Cinebench or have it render 24/7 on Video. For gaming it was half of that. And it even powered a triple crossfire R270X or later 3x RX580's. Worked perfectly fine if you ask me. However once i swapped with a 2700x it was a day and night difference. Primarily the minimum FPS in games was most noticable. Where the FX would dip back to 50 the 2700x would keep it constant at 80FPS on WQHD. A must more consistent experience.

The 5800X is 50% faster then a 2700X; so i assume jumping from a FX to a 5800X now would set you with a almost 100% faster CPU at roughly half power requirement if the FX was oc'ed. Above picture was my old and OC'ed setup. A Crosshair Formula Z followed with 2400Mhz DDR3 and a FX8320 at 4.8Ghz. 5Ghz was possible but the power requirement was absurd and the power needed to stable operated was too much for the 240mm rad to even handle. The crosshair Z was a fantastic board for the AM3+. Not just a good build high quality VRM but a dozen of options to finetune every bit and part of it, followed with up to 4x crossfire if you wanted it.

MSI AMD 970 Krait with a 9590 on fire

Cheap motherboards who used a vague build of VRM's where prone to fail.

 

[eidairaman1]

I never understood the bias towards the FX either. Ive owned the platform after upgrading from a Thuban 1055T at 4.1Ghz. They say the Thuban had better IPC but the FX in my opinion was faster due to it's clockspeeds. Clock for clock yes the thuban might have bin a tad better, but once on 4.5Ghz or above the FX would still be faster day and night. And the additional DDR3 vs DDR2 for example, and the better IMC made it just a better product. FX baddest timing was simply releasing a new 8 core or 8 thread CPU into a market that was fully reliant on games that would be using single core only. Thats why it performed weaker compared to an Intel. But in multithreading, video encoding for example it performed equal or even better then a i7 back in the days.

It had to be OC'ed. But they where made for that due to the longer pipelines and it offered alot of value for your money where Intel CPU's where locked or you had to go for the most expensive model. FX platform could be tricky, but it was'nt the fault of AMD but motherboard makers for applying a crap VRM that would either throttle the CPU or simply chrash the whole thing. Reports of VRM's catching fire after installing a CPU was real. With AM4 however, motherboard makers must comply to AMD's specs. This means that you can buy a 50$ board and run a high end 5950X and even with overclocking. That is the big difference in between the two generations as well.

Yes it was slow on single threading. Thats why i had it oc'ed in the first place at 4.8Ghz with a 300MHz FSB. But it did'nt consume constantly 220W or so. It only consumed that amount of power if you threw a very unrealistic load such as Intel Burntest, Cinebench or have it render 24/7 on Video. For gaming it was half of that. And it even powered a triple crossfire R270X or later 3x RX580's. Worked perfectly fine if you ask me. However once i swapped with a 2700x it was a day and night difference. Primarily the minimum FPS in games was most noticable. Where the FX would dip back to 50 the 2700x would keep it constant at 80FPS on WQHD. A must more consistent experience.

View attachment 275365

The 5800X is 50% faster then a 2700X; so i assume jumping from a FX to a 5800X now would set you with a almost 100% faster CPU at roughly half power requirement if the FX was oc'ed. Above picture was my old and OC'ed setup. A Crosshair Formula Z followed with 2400Mhz DDR3 and a FX8320 at 4.8Ghz. 5Ghz was possible but the power requirement was absurd and the power needed to stable operated was too much for the 240mm rad to even handle. The crosshair Z was a fantastic board for the AM3+. Not just a good build high quality VRM but a dozen of options to finetune every bit and part of it, followed with up to 4x crossfire if you wanted it.

MSI AMD 970 Krait with a 9590 on fire

Cheap motherboards who used a vague build of VRM's where prone to fail.

Mines aircooled, luck of the draw, but the worst case scenario was Ryzen Blender back then. It never crashed and it completed it. Under gaming it was at about 55 degrees and idle it was right at 40, like the Athlon XPs ran...

I used unigen benchmarks to know when it was stable even lol (just upped the vcore)

 

[Jism]

Try Intelburntest, opt for high. Be warned; it is a very unrealistic load (Linpack) that will put your VRM's and CPU to extreme stress. If your motherboard has a flaw it will defenity toast it.

 

[Icon Charlie]

It served me very well. The MB+CPU+RAM was mine until 2019 (built myself a R7-2700 rig using the base I still run) and the 1070 I handed down in early 2021. So I know it's limited but still capable. Just stay away from anything requiring AVX2.

My 1800X equals in performance to a standard 2700 and under 5% ave. less than a 2700X, which I have as my back up computer. And yes I have a EVGA 1070 on it as well. Great video card. I do suggest if you have a little bit of money, upgrade your ram to 32gb with low timings if possible.

I did that in 2019 in my 1800X before upgrading to to what I have now... and there is a BIG difference between 16 and 32 GB when you are multitasking/opening a lot of windows while on the computers.

Because of the AMD TAX on the AM5 motherboards and I AM calling this a tax, I am not upgrading my rig for the foreseeable future. So I am thinking of going up from 64GB to 128GB on my current rig. Most people do not need this much ram but I'm old school. and as taught back in the day. MORE RAM is MORE BETTER... And yea I can afford making the change. You just have to make that assessment of how long you are going to use the rig for it's purpose.

So what I am saying is there is Nothing Wrong with using old tech. I've got a 22 year old HP GS85 that still works. I works in Win7 easily and should work in Win 10. I still have a K6 Athlon that still works and I've used for 10 years before upgrading. That rig paid for itself many of time.

Good luck with your future builds.

 

[Jism]

Linux is in that regard 10x better with memory management then Windows will ever be. Linux on default uses all the available memory for caching purposes. Once it's needed it releases it and thus the performance is always on par. More memory did'nt make windows really faster. Perhaps the startup of programs or games that would load DLL's into memory could be speed up, but generally with Windows you need a fast IO / fast CPU and all that.

I have 15 (web)servers, all on linux obviously, the smallest picked out of this one:

It's doing exactly as it should; utilize the available memory thats not in use and put it for caching purposes such as database or PHP queries. This obviously keeps the speed.

 

[lexluthermiester]

So, is it worth it getting him that new 8GB for his FX rig, even now that we're bordering 2023?

Hell yes! You'll double the RAM bandwidth because with one stick of RAM the system is running in single channel mode instead of dual channel mode with two sticks. With that extra 8GB stick, you'll have 16GB for that system and that will be plenty of RAM for the foreseeable future.

 

[sLowEnd]

See, my brother has the following rig:

AMD FX-8320E Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P 1x8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 CL10 Zotac GTX 1070 Mini Kingston A400 240GB WDC Blue 1TB

I found a new 8GB stick of the same Vengeance 1600CL10 for about 200 BRL (already listing local currency) and I'm kinda willing to gift him that.
If his whole platform was to be upgraded to a new one (say 10th gen i5/Zen 2 R5 or newer) it would cost at least 8 times that value here. I wouldn't splash that cash, much less my brother would be able to do that now.
And in the event he upgrades his rig one day, his current one would probably be handed down to our parents.

So, is it worth it getting him that new 8GB for his FX rig, even now that we're bordering 2023?

That's a lot of money for a stick of DDR3 IMO. Your money could be better spent on other things in life.

 

[siluro818]

I've never been a fan of buying used RAM. It's just the one component I've had fail the most often that I don't trust used stuff at all.

Funny, for me this would be the one component I've never seen fail...

 

[Shrek]

I've never been a fan of buying used RAM.

I almost always buy used RAM (with lifetime warrantee) and then test it heavily before use.