Memory Bottleneck

[shav]

Hi guys,
I'm slowly upgrading my PC, piece by piece. The next step for me is to do the CPU and motherboard. I'll be buying the E8400 CPU.

I was wondering if I upgrade the CPU but keep my old memory pc5300 4GB, will this memory be a serious bottelneck to the system.

Should I upgrade the memory also. I'd prefer to do this at a later stage but I've a bit more cash

Cheers
Shav

 

[antas]

IMO that should be fine, keep your pc5300 first and see the result. Esp. since you have 4GB. On the other hand, pc5300 is 667MHz, which will fit your E8400 with 1333MHz FSB on 1:1 (dunno whether I'm using the correct terminology, but reading some threads and some articles like that ) >ps: people like Zorg or Supreme has better knowledge on this issue ..

But for me I will give a shot on it and better to save the money ($70-100++) until you should upgrade to DDR3

 

[evongugg]

What antas said is correct.

 

[shav]

Cheers guys. Thats good for me!

 

[Kraynor]

Just to add another point - to fully utilise the 4GB you must be running a 64-bit OS, but I'm sure you knew that already

 

[computertech82]

Just to add another point - to fully utilize the 4GB you must be running a 64-bit OS, but I'm sure you knew that already

Not really, since most programs use the typical 2gb memory address limit. There is NO difference between 32-bit vs 64-bit, even toms has an article about it.
I have XP 32bit and 4gb of memory, with the 384mb video card, I'm still using over 3gb of memory for the OS and programs.

 

[Kraynor]

I'm not so sure about the NO difference bit, I certainly noticed a difference between Vista 32-bit and 4GB RAM, and Vista 64-bit with 8GB RAM.

But that could just be me time-traveling a few seconds into the future every time I work with a very large Photoshop image.

 

[geofelt]

The difference between ddr2-667 and 800 will not be noticeable to you unless you are overclocking.