Importance of RAM Speed/Quality

[pcguideuser745]

Hi everyone,

I am thinking of building a new high-end gaming system, but am unsure of how much the system RAM affects overall system speed, and how important it is on performance. I am thinking of 4GB of system RAM, and am looking at OCZ Gold XTC Edition RAM. I know that the amount of RAM you have in a system is important, but how important is the speed of it?

According to this link:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/02/21/overclocking-9-value-priced-ddr2-800-kits/page8.html#maximum_speed

My OCZ Gold XTC Edition RAM performs at the bottom of the chart, and it is a rather large difference.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

[ikeray]

it really all depends on how much the mother board supports. if you buy the newest, fastest stuff, but your computer only supports 133 Mhz, then it will only perform at 133 Mhz. we need to know what motherboard you are going with, that will determine the processor, the amount and type of RAM, and some what of the graphics card. do you have more information on this computer?

[azzey]

How much are you going to spend? Are you going with AMD or Intel? IS this going to be a gaming system?

The RAM speed does make quite a difference. Socket AM2 AMD systems are better off with DDR2-800 while Core2 Duo systems will not use more than DDR2-667.

[pcguideuser745]

I am planning on building a high-end gaming system. Here is what I have planned out so far:

Processor: Intel QX6700 Kentsfield 2.66GHz
RAM: 2 x (2GB OCZ Gold Edition DDR2 CL5: PC-6400 Model: OCZ2G8002GK)
Motherboard: EVGA 680i
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS SLI
Power Supply: Thermaltake 850W Model: W0131RU
Monitor: HP LP1965 6ms 19" monitor
Speakers: Creative I-Trigue 2200
Sound Card: Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache
Case: Undecided
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit Edition

[UkGamer]

4gb of ram is a bit overkill don't you think, I suppose if you have nothing else to spend your money on though. I doubt that you will see any performance increase in any current game.

If I am correct that proccesor has an FSB of 1066 which translates as PC8500. If I were you I would get 2Gb of the faster ram rather than 4Gb of slow (well when I say slow that ram is still very fast).

[pcguideuser745]

Well, considering the massive hardware requirements of Vista, I figured 4GB was the new "sweet spot" for RAM.

But with that aside, would it make a big difference if I were to have 1066MHz RAM instead of 800MHz?

[mjc]

Well, considering the massive hardware requirements of Vista, I figured 4GB was the new "sweet spot" for RAM.

In an XP world, 4 gig is OVERKILL, (considering that XP can only use 3 gig effectively)...in a Vista world 4 gig may only be a good start :eek:

I'm pretty sure that a full, eye candy on max, setup of Ultimate would eat a large chunk of that 4 gig and go looking for more...let alone try to run any programs...so don't worry about it, if you want 4 GB, do it, you'll probably be thankful that you did. (XP really does prefer 1 gig or more and, though I haven't tried it, 2 seems to be best for it...from what others who do run it with 2 tell me.)

For best results, match the RAM/processor speed...RAM that is slower than the processor (fsb) is going to be a bottleneck...faster, has no value unless overclocking is planned.

[pcguideuser745]

But wouldn't my ram, since it is at 400mhz much higher than the 266 multiplier on the QX6700, and therefore would be no bottleneck, since the default ratio is 3:2, and that would equate to 44 ram : 266 cpu? since 1066/4 = 266.

[jlreich]

Actually if your are using your ram in dual channel mode, and of course you are, DDR2-533 is enough and matches the FSB perfectly. 2x533=1066. In this situation you need to think about effective bandwidth.

Stick with DDR2-667. I has the extra bandwidth for any overclocking if so desired in the future. Anything more than that is a waste on an Intel machine.

Perhaps when Prices come down for high quality low latency DDR2-800 it will be worth getting it, but that still hasn't happened.

BTW, I would still go with Corsair, Kingston, Crucial or Patriot for ram. OCZ is decent ram but is known to be a bear to get working correctly sometimes.