Musician in the need of help: A7N8X Deluxe board ram upgrade

[arda21]

Thanks for taking time to read my post;

Saved up money to upgrade my A7N8X Deluxe Asus motherboard, which has 2 x kingston 256mb each 400ddr rams, now I want to have 2 x 1 gb rams to have a nice room for my musical applications.

When I first put together this computer back in mid 2003, the motherboard was what they call 'choosing the ram' that I put, I think it had problems with some Twinmos rams at the time. Now I am looking for suggestions from people with experience on this motherboard/or similiar to choose the most suitable 2 x 1GB memories out there?

what do you guys suggest..?

and please be gentle, Not too advanced with hardware stuff, but I appreciate your help for sure!!!

thanks again
Arda

 

[utaka95]

NForce 2 boards can't run 2 gigs in dual channel. It will work in single channel, though. Any of the 1 gig ddr 400 sticks from Crucial, Corsair, Adata, OCZ, or Kingston should be compatible. I've personally used dual 512 sticks of all of these brands in A7N8x boards with no compatibility issues.

 

[dhvd79a]

CMX1024-3200PRO from Corsair works fine with that motherboard. I've been runing the Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PT (2x512MB) in mine since I bought it. There are certainly many others that will work fine. Many vendors, Corsair, kingston, and Crucial for example, have configurcation apps on their websites.

 

[arda21]

thanks guy for the quick reply

so utaka, my friend, you suggest I get 2 x 512mb to be able to run dual instead of 2 x 1gb because those wouldnt run 2gb in total in dual mode you are saying?

 

[utaka95]

Not really, just wanted to save you the panic of "It doesn't run in dual channel anymore, what's wrong with it?"

Edit: 2gigs will be fully addressed, just not in dual-channel.

 

[utaka95]

Are you using this machine to record? If so what sound card are you using? I have a musician friend who uses a Lynx 2, I believe.

 

[Mondoman]

... I've been runing the Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PT (2x512MB) in mine since I bought it. There are certainly many others that will work fine. ....

If you've had compatibility problems before, I'd avoid the "value" lines of the various manufacturers and stick with a premium line. If you do decide to go with a "value" line anyway, go with Kingston ValueRAM or similar with a good compatibility reputation, and stay away from ValueSelect.

 

[arda21]

utaka, i am also upgrading my soundcard

I use the program called Cubase, and I am hopefully getting a m-audio external audio interface, (external sound card) with lots of inputs to record, the connection is firewire... which seems to be working fine with my computer (I had a chance to test and use those external soundcard on my setup with 512mb, and they just work fine)

 

[jamiepotter]

utaka, i am also upgrading my soundcard

I use the program called Cubase, and I am hopefully getting a m-audio external audio interface, (external sound card) with lots of inputs to record, the connection is firewire... which seems to be working fine with my computer (I had a chance to test and use those external soundcard on my setup with 512mb, and they just work fine)

Well, Cubase by itself uses f'all memory. Unless you're using all sorts of soft synths, Halion, Rewire etc., you shouldn't really have any memory issues, even with the amount of memory you've got. The most important thing in music apps is getting the buffer size right, having a good sound card with good drivers, and having a decent hard drive that supports DMA (you should have this anyway judging by the age of your components).

 

[dhvd79a]

"If you've had compatibility problems before, I'd avoid the "value" lines of the various manufacturers and stick with a premium line. If you do decide to go with a "value" line anyway, go with Kingston ValueRAM or similar with a good compatibility reputation, and stay away from ValueSelect"

In fact the corsair website recommends against using their 'value-line" memory with the A7N8X lines of boards.

Dave

 

[arda21]

jamie what is f'all memory?

well the thing is I use lots of VST instruments, that I load up to Cubase, and I think those use a lot of ram eventually.

I am now debating between using dual with 512x2 for a total of 1gb ram
or not using dual channel 1gb x 2 for a total of 2gb ram instead in total...

I totally understand what you mean by a good soundcard, and I am hoping I should be getting that with this m audio external interface.

 

[utaka95]

If you go with 512 sticks try to get something with "tight" timings (ex: 2-3-3-7) and you'll probably be all right. I never tried any value ram in our tester A7N8X, so maybe that's why I never had any compatibility probs. As far as ram timings go, I spent a lot of time screwing around with that board and an Abit nf7s and they both liked fast timings except for the tRas (the last number), the best memory throughput I measured was with 2-3-3-11 timings on the Asus.

 

[jamiepotter]

f'all stands for fraq all (in the language of Battlestar Galactica), feck all (in the language of Father Ted), or f*ck all (in the language of NME). Very technical...

VST instruments... Depends what sort of patch they are. If they are soft synths, I can't quite see why this would involve that much memory: it's more likely to clog up your CPU (you can check this in VST performance). Samplers (e.g. Halion, drum machines etc.) are are usually what gets the memory.

I doubt dual channel vs single channel will make any difference whatsoever. Bandwidth is not usually an issue. It's far more likely to be messed up by the interaction between HDDs and memory. So if that's your stumbling block, just get the 2gb.

You just need enough memory so that it won't use the hard disk for anything other than writing the wav files as you record (page filing is a disaster, basically). That way you won't get glitches.

 

[arda21]

utaka, thanks man, I appreciate the input,

thanks jamie i kinda see what you are saying...

I am on the however, is confused about these value ram concept, you mean like a noname ram which you buy cheaper but practically it's by the same companies with brands.

and one more thing can you a little bit explain this thing;
"If you go with 512 sticks try to get something with "tight" timings (ex: 2-3-3-7) " that you mention, tight timings, and how do I measure that? I mean I dont have the priveladge to test rams, I am just gonna get one from an online store after I make my mind, but I am assuming this is something that I need to look into in motherboards tech specs, or the ram's tech specs from the online store that I am buying from? as you can see I am quite mixed up with this timing issue... I hope it's not too advanced to explain..

 

[jamiepotter]

Don't worry about RAM timings. I would say that it's irrelevant considering your purposes. That's what I'm trying to explain. It's all about how you use your hard disks. The only thing you need to worry about is getting enough memory so that the OS doesn't decide to use the page file. I would have thought 512 would be fine, but 1gb will err on the side of caution I suppose.

Also: be wary of unbranded value memory. But explicit 'value' ranges from Geil, Corsair, Crucial, Patriot, OCZ etc. are all going to be fine. If I were you, I'd just get one stick of 1gb branded value RAM. Should cost you around £50/$80.