I have to decide weather 2GB ddr2 667mhz or 800mhz is worth getting. Is there a noticeable difference? I am going to run it with and AMD 6000+ dual core. or stead of a higher clock speed add one more GB of ram at 667mhz? thanks
Good question. I'm looking to upgrade to the Intel E6850 3.00Ghz (Conroe 1333mhz) Processor, Dual core LGA775 65w 4mb cache. I'm probably going to go with the Corsair Twin2X 4096MB 240-pin DDR2 XMS2-6400 Twin Pack (2x 2048mb sticks) w/heat spreader, 5-5-5-15 simply becuase it appears to offer good value for money. I'm not sure the cost benefit on the faster ram is worth it at close to twice the price. Runningbear
About five months ago I rebuilt my favorite trading box. I upgraded from a AMD XP3700+ (I think) to a AMD 64 6000+ on a ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe with Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 (2 X 1GB). That was my third or fourth upgrade and this was the first time I was totally blown away. It feeds two 21" Samsungs with an Nvidia Quadro FX1400 (eBay) plus another 19" off a PCI adapter. I load everything up with charts, LV2, DOME, T&S and IB - it does not choke, it does not even slow down. I liked it so much I've already got the same parts to rebuild my backup box this weekend. So after all that, I'd vote buy the memory I bought (twice) it is only $60 at Newegg.com after a $40 rebate from Corsair. And yes, Corsair did send me my first rebate after about four weeks. I have two empty memory slots but I don't see the need to add any more and at only $60 I wouldn't hesitate if I thought I'd get more speed.
I recently read a review about performance with differing speed RAM. The slowest FSB was 800mhz, the fastest was 1333mhz. The fastest beat the slowest by up to 30% in some benchmarks. How that translates into real-time app performance is variable. Unless you're certain your apps utilize the CPU significantly, having a fast one is mostly a waste of money. The computer will boot, shut down, and load apps quicker, but most of the work for most apps is done in RAM. The CPU gets very low usage most of the time. I have a couple of older P4's, DDR400, 2.8Ghz. My C2D rig, DDR2-667, is slightly faster at booting, shutting down and loading charts. The performance difference of the C2D does not justify the cost differential in my use.
I agree with gnome and dstangier. When you say the ram is twice as much you're doing the wrong calculation. Divide the ram delta by your system cost ... and maybe it an extra 5% ... for maybe 800/667 = 19% performance improvement. I've got 800 now and when I build the next one after xmas I will go to 1G ram.
The most important thing is configuring memory as dual channel versus single channel. The manual will explain which slots to use on your motherboard. If your total memory is 2gb then use qty 2 1gb sticks. Example on a 4 slot board you typically use slot 1 and 3. That will make it dual channel automatically. This doubles the processor to memory bandwidth. fwiw Bsulli
My current system is an AMD 64 bit 3500 Single core chip with 2 gig DDR400 ram in dual channel mode. I use it for my primary trading machine and it only runs esignal. Nothing else. I run some pretty CPU intensive scripts and I'm peaking this set up at 100% CPU usage every 5 or six seconds. Don't get me wrong, this is a superfast machine for most things, but esignal is a resource hog. I wish they'd get thier ass into gear and start multithreading their app. I'm upgrading to new machine to try and get this peaking down to about 50% of CPU usage so I can run a few more scripts at the same time. My only fear is that core 2 duo is designed specifically for running multiple apps effectively, not one app fast. So I'm not sure how much inprovement I'll see. I've also been told that DDR400 in dual channel mode is actually faster than DDR2. What does everyone think, will the 6850 core 2 duo with the 6700 DDR2 ram be a lot faster? Runningbear PS. New chip, ram and MB is going to set me back about a grand aussie which is about $850 US. I'm keeping my existing case, matrox pci cards and 10K wraptor hard drive.
If you want the latest and best get DDR3. The difference between DDR2 667 and 800 will not be noticeable. But going with DDR3 will be. Also if you really want to see your system speed up, get a raptor 10,000 rpm hard drive. I've been using these for years. They speed up the clunkiest of systems. There is a very noticeable difference in boot up time and program click through.
Runningbear, Go back to the tests at tomshardware for your answer. Remember that even if your resource hog is only on one processor the other one is free to handle all those other tasks necessary for your rh to operate at all.