RAM Speed or Quantity?
 

i'm thinking about upgrading my ram and i was wondering if i should go w/ speed or quantity.

i have a pc2700 micron 256mb stick in there, so should i put a 2100 512mb stick or a 2700 256mb stick??

which would improve performance??

(btw, 2700 is as high as my mobo will take)

I would put a 2700 512 in, but 2100 is slower, however unless you are doing some huge video editing you will not notice the differance with the 2100.

But ram is so cheap , i think even best buy has 2700 512 for 40 bucks. So if it were me, i would do the single 512 2700 stick, or at very least do 2 256 2700's.

which mobo you have?

Interesting question Dude.

In my job I deal with hydraulics which leads to this law of physics, "Pascal's Law is also called the "Hydrostatic paradox" and it says that the pressure on the bottom of a vessel with a fluid in it is only depending on the distance to the surface and the density, but not on the shape of the vessel.", which means no fluid has its own shape and will transfer energy directly corresponding to the energy pushing it unless the surface area has been altered to relate to an eqaution prescribed by mathmatical calculation discovered by Pascal. We could equivilate the query to a time v volume treatise expounded by the mathematician Albert Einstien, (mar 1879-april 1955).

Bottom line, you want more ram, and tolerate slower ram. Machines are so fast now, just get more ram. What's a nano second, go for volume. Besides, any memory is fast now.

equation (large amounts of fast ram/your budget)=the best thing.

gigabyte 7vac

512MB DDR PC2700 crucial has that for 72 bucks.


and is it a good idea to mix up manufacturer's??

As long as it's the same speed (ie pc2700) different manufacturer's shouldn't matter.

I'd go with the pc2700 ram, but i'm a speed freak The 2100 ram i've used wasn't so bad...

so, i cant mix a 2100 w/ a 2700?

Actually in your situation slower ram I believe would help more.

Your CPU probably isn't running synchronous with the ram speed when it's running 166mhz (2700). Your cpu is probably running 133 (2100) speed. So the extra 33mhz in memory bandwidth may add at most about 1~2% increase in speed.

With 256 megs of ram, you are going to start hitting your paging file minutes after a reboot if you are running windows XP, and not much longer for any os. Anyone here can tell you as soon as you start hitting your paging file...things slow way down. Going from the nanoseconds to milliseconds (That's like minutes to hours for us).

More ram would be better for you in this situation. If you had a 166fsb processor then the situation would be moot cause all you could run is 2700 memory or higher.

Manufacturer technically doesn't matter, because they're all going by the same specs. In reality, some manufacturers produce more reliable memory than others. However, you're never likely to encounter major errors and if so, you're covered by warranty, in which case they'll just replace the stick.

Go with volume, too, because speed is going to have a negligible effect unless you're a professional (in which case you probably wouldn't have posted this question).

Also, I'm fairly certain that you can mix speeds without a hitch, as long as your computer can support both.

Actually, RAM manufacturer makes a HUGE difference!

Generic "Pricewatch" RAM will only get you in trouble. I know this because I've been there " :D

I'd go with Crucial since they sell good RAM at a good price, and they back it with a lifetime warranty.

Oh, and get the 512Mb 2700. Any version of Windows after 3.1 never really ran right with less :p

If you mix and match speeds, then it is just like in the old days of PC100 and PC 133 SDRAM. All the RAM will run at the speed of the slowest chip. But like others before me have stated you will not notice a gigantic difference between PC2100 and PC2700 especially if there is 128MB more of PC2100 RAM.

$72 is a good price, and like a few others have said, manufacture miss match no problem, i am running crucial and micron

But always match speeds, so you get what you pay for.

some of you guys are way off, in the motherboard, the ram will run the speed you set it at in the motherboard, and if you automatically do it, most of the time it runs at the speed that the ram in the first ram slot is set at. Now, you dont want to mix ram types if you can help it, and there is little need for more ram than 512MB total, so id go with the 2700, www.newegg.com for the best prices

-i build computers for a living, just pm me if you have any questions.