Crack

I have looked everywhere, and I can't find the answer.

Which would make the system run faster:

1 512MB PC3200 stick of ram,

or

1 512MB PC3200 stick and 2 256MB PC2700 for a total of 1g?

I can put the 2 256MB in the Dual Channel slots, but that would make the memory evectively run at 333Mhz, but be a gig, or 400Mhz, but only 512MB...

Which would be better for games?
Which would be better for everything else?

I am going to get another 512MB of PC3200 later, but for now, I have 1 PC3200 512MB, and 2 sticks of PC2700 256MB.

Which combo should I use for now for the best performance?

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~Halx

Dilbert1234567

for gaming, 1 gig will be better than 512, even though the speed is slower, you have more room so you will have to load from the HD less, and the HD is very, very, very slow compared to the RAM. For everything else, again go with the gig, windows takes up most of that anyways, which does not leave much left for the rest of the programs you are running.

Go with the gig and then upgrade to 2 sticks of 512 later

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Crack

That's what I was leaning towards, thanks!

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Jinn

My own personal experience tells the opposite:

I was able to run the same game at 12-15 frames per second (average) faster by using 512 PC3200 than 1GB PC2100. I didn't have dual channel, but nonetheless.

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Martel

I would tend to say that a gig of ram would outperform 512mb in pretty much any ddr/ddr2 situation available today. Generally ram comes into effect more when loading or caching and I wouldn't think you would see any direct frames per second type of effect.* What kind of setup and game are you talking about, Jinn?

A third option might be if your motherboard and ram could support it to put all of it in and then set the clock speed somewhere in between 333 and 400 (overclocking the slower ram and underclocking the faster ram) to kinda get the best of both worlds.

A fourth option is that the two 256mb sticks in dual channel would give you higher bandwidth and thus performance than the 512mb stick alone. (pc2700 = 2.66gb/s times 2 for dual channel is 5.33gb/s compared to the 3.2 gb/s of the pc3200 ram) Of course bandwidth isn't everything, a smaller amount of ram that you can access more quickly wouldn't necessarily be better than a larger amount of ram that's a little slower.


*Unless you're dealing with one of those video cards that shares system ram... but even then more total space might be better than having it be a little faster.

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Anamnesis

Dilbert1234567

well i don't doubt you, he is talking about PC2700, not PC2100, i'm not sure how that will effect the results. I think the best thing to do would be for him to test both of them, that would be the easiest.

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cyrnel

That's usually the best course. It depends on the applications and their footprint, if they're ever paging to disk, the memory controller/chipset, their cnanneledness, and the specific timing limits of your memory. One set of results on one system is a data point but may be very different from another similar system.

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Nimetic

Good one. My philosphy entirely. Don't guess - measure instead.

Cynthetiq

very true, you'll also find that performance will change application to application because of how it was written concerning swapping out memory.

good luck! an interesting thing to test.

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Crack

So the testing begins. Shall I use 3DMark06?

I should also give the rest of my (soon to be) PC specs...

Asus A8N-SLI
AMD Athlon64 3500+
ANTEC 400watt SmartPower 2.0 power suppily
Seagate Barracuda 160gig SATA
GeForce 7600GS 256MB (I plan to get another one later for SLI)
and the RAM.

I'll try both comobs tomorrow when my processer arrives and I install Windows XP x64 SP2 and let everyone know!

If anyone wants any other tests ran, let me know, and i'll see what I can do

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Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

~Halx

Crack

With 512MB of PC3200 I get a 3DMark06 score of 1938. Kinda sad I think.


I will test the system again tomorrow with the other ram added.

now I am running 3DMark06 on my old machine..

amd 2500+ barton chip
512 PC2700 ram
160gb WD ide HDD
geforce FX 5200 ultra 256MB

any guesses on the score?

ok, fine, there was no score. It tried it's hardest, but by poor little machine just could seem to do anything. now I am putting in the old ram into the new mobo. Wish me luck.

With the old 512MB of PC2700 and the new 512MB PC3200 I got a score of:



so I guess thats that.

__________________
Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

~Halx