dogzilla

I upgraded my system from an Athlon 1900XP+ to Athlon 3200XP+ due to overheating issues with the 1900XP+. I had 1GB of PC2100 memory which the new motherboard and 3200XP+ work with just fine.

The 3200XP+ will work with PC3200 memory. The question is, will I see a large speed increase by doing this. The main application where I think I would get an advantage is Photoshop when I edit large images.

I can sort of project a theoretical maximum speedup of 1.5x based on 266Mhz bus vs 400Mhz. I suspect that with the 512Kb L2 cache, the actual speedup will be much less.

I can get 1GB of Micron or Samsung memory for about $150.00. If I'm not going to see a noticeable speedup, I'll save my money.

Anyone have any insight?

Lasereth

You probably won't notice too big of a difference. Like you said, the L2 is what's gonna give the huge boost in this case, not necessarily the FSB. I'd buy PC3200 but simply because I'm a PC dork that's gotta have my system running synchronized. It'd be worth it if you had the extra money, but if you're tight on cash then it's probably not worth it.

-Lasereth

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Jolt

If you're doing advanced engineering or financial calculations on the machine...it'll be worth it.

otherwise spend the money on something else

spade111

You'll see a big difference in anything that loves memory bandwidth...

See this article from Hard OCP. It talks about the differences in performance between PC2100, and PC3200 on the Intel 865 Platform.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDU5

Your application is a little different, and suffers less from a lack of Memory bandwidth. This article deals with AMD compatible Chipsets.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDQz


I would suspect that your increase in performance with PC3200 be only marginal... (definatly not the 1.5x you mentioned) that said... it's only 150 bucks... why not?

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dogzilla

Thanks everybody. I decided to keep the PC2100 memory I have. The machine is already pretty quick most of the time, so I figure I'm better off using the money for other toys.