Does Speed Matter?

[pleasehelp]

Hello,
I just have a question about the speed of RAM. Right now i have 3Gb of RAM running at 667mhz. I am probally going to get a new motherboard after christmas that will be able to go up to 1033mhz RAM. Should i buy 4gb of that speed ram when i buy it or should i just stick with the RAM i have. My PC is strictly for gaming. Thanks for your help

Intel Pentium D (i am getting E8400 soon!)
3Gb RAM
XFX 8800gt XXX
X-fi Fitality
250 Gb HDD

 

[Battenburg]

That depends is your current ram DDR or DDR2?

If it's DDR2 and you don't overclock and run stock speeds your current RAM is perfectly fine. I'm assuming you meant a motherboard which will support 1333MHz.

An E8400 runs quad pumped (4 x 333MHz FSB) and DDR2 is double data rate so your current RAM would be running at it's max. supported speed (333MHz x 2) at a 1:1 ratio.

If you have DDR then you're going to have to replace the memory to DDR2 (or DDR3) anyway. In that case I'd go for (2 x 2Gb) memory to run in dual channel mode.

 

[pleasehelp]

Hey yes my RAM is DDR2. So if i kept my current 667 RAM and get a E8400 would that be great for gaming?

 

[Battenburg]

Yes if you do not plan to overclock and will run at stock speeds then DDR2-667 is a perfect match to run with that cpu. What configuration is the 3Gb you have? 3 x 1Gb or 1 x 1Gb + 1 x 2Gb?

You might want to consider dual channel mode if you want to run the memory and motherboard to its potential.

 

[pleasehelp]

Hey thanks again.
I have a 1 2Gb stick and a 1 1Gb stick.
Please explain the dual channel mode for me.
Thanks

 

[pleasehelp]

Oh and one more thing.
With XP if i was to get 1 more gig for 4 gigs would XP still recognize that?
What about up to 8 which the motherboard i want can hold?

 

[Battenburg]

Dual channel mode runs memory a little faster. If you read around though, most folk say the difference is only about 5%. But you need to have certain conditions met for it to run in dual channel mode.

This is a very good article which would explain that alot better than I could - http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/cs-011965.htm

The way I understand it is that even if you were to buy another 1 Gb stick, you'd still not get dual channel as you'd have an odd amount of dimms.

I don't think its a problem if you aren't too concerned about a 5% hit in memory performance and in real world gaming terms this probably isn't going to affect your FPS by very much.

But if you were to consider buying more then you may as well buy a new 2 Gb stick and run both 2 Gb sticks in dual channel (not using the 1Gb you have - stick it on eBay or something).

XP can only address a max of 4Gb which means you'll only have available 3 to 3.5 Gb of that. 4 Gb is plenty for gaming with XP, no point getting more.

 

[pleasehelp]

Thanks a lot for your help i will read that article. If i only get a 5% increase its not even worth it.