i know this is a pretty dumb question but i was wondering how much of a difference in speed is noticed lets say i have 1 stick of pc3200 512meg total cl3 or 2 sticks of pc2100 1gig total cl2 i know the speed is a lot higher on the pc4000 but on the other hand i have twice as much to work with. i also know it depends on what I'm doing.. I'm more just curious as to what you all have to say about the issue.
i guess the real question is there ever a case where more of slower is better than lesss of faster?
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Originally Posted by Heywould3
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Originally Posted by ROF
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I'd say that 1GB of slower memory will be better especially if you run WinXP and/or play newer games and such. You can always download SI Sandra and do your tests with 'fast' 512MB and then 'slow' 1GB and see for yourself.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/SiSoftware_Sandra_Lite_d4664.html
Cheers -
Originally Posted by Heywould3
my thoughts
there many things that effects the overall efficency of your system, ie how fast it does things and a lot of time it depends on what kind of programs you run and what you do...
and it would definitely help to know what you do... because for many people 512 is quite sufficent and with many programs having 1 gig there maybe little noticiable improvement...!!
for example... a word processor would n't make much if any difference if you have 512 or 1 gig however..... doing serious movie editing or major game playing or mmajor graphics works/programs..... having 1-4 gigs of ram can make a huge difference!!!
the big thing with ram is that you don't want to be forced to use virtual ram..which is located on the hard drive (that used whenyo runout of regular ram) the moment yo have to go there things start slowing down!!.
you didn't ask this but it goes with increasing the speed of your system..... too many programs running in the background can slow things down regardless of how much ram yo have.... so I always suggest
1. disable alll needles programs that startup at windows boot including the screen savers......
2. after that disable any needless startup services......
doing those things.... not only makes avail more ram for your programs but your overall system effiency/speed will increase... -
Faster RAM (except for shorter RAS/CAS delays) will not make your system run any faster at all unless you change the memory bus speed (generally performed by changing the FSB or Hypertransport clock speeds). Shorter RAS/CAS delays will only lead to minor speed improvements, on the order of 1 percent.
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thx guys.. heres is a good example.. what would you do with this?
new nforce4 chipset board pc3200 dual chanel mobo.. im running crucial mem pc3200 512 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146546) my mem.. and use it mostly for converting old mpg vhs or vcd to divx/xvid for archiving.. i feel that faster is better in this case. but would it be faster if i put 1 gig ( 2 512s of pc2100) in it?.. would it use the dual chanel and make up the difference?
i have these sticks just sitting here is what made me think about it -
If you already have the sticks of PC2100 why don't you just pop them in and find out for yourself?
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Depending on the Operating Systems use of memory - size is always better. If the Operating System does not take advantage of the increased size, then speed is better. So it's best to determine what your Operating System will do with the memory and upgrade accordingly.
Be warned alot of the larger memory sizes, 1GB, have very high CAS latencies, 3 or higher. If you want to add 1GB you would be better off with 2 x 512MB modules. Those you can find with CAS latencies of 2.
Also, if you have a dual channel system you would be better off with getting the 2 x 512MB and taking advantage of the dual channels.
In the end it will be up to you to determine whether or not it really makes a difference. You can run tests and see that you have a fast system but you might not really notice when running programs. Reason being there are a lot of other factors that determine how fast your system will be.
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