please recommend where to buy 2 gig modules ddr2
Scotter
The motherboard I've picked, like many, has only 4 slots for RAM.
I want to put 2 gig sticks in each slot so I can have a total of 8 gig.
The ONLY 2 gig sticks I can find of at least DDR-800 speed are at NewEgg by
two brands I never heard of.
The brands are "G.SKILL" and "GeIL".
Can anyone tell me of their experience with these brands?
OR can someone refer me to a site that sells 2 gig sticks of Kingston,
Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, or OCZ? Thanks!
Finally, if I am going to do a bit of overclocking, are there some important
things to consider with which type of RAM I buy?
Thanks!
--
Scotter
Bill Davidsen
brand in 1G, and got PC2 5400 (instead of 5300) which has slightly
faster timings. My ASUS board has the ability to set memory speed
separately from CPU overclocking, so you can (in theory) take advantage
of the speed of the memory at any CPU speed.
Note: the memory you want is listed as desktop memory, not server memory.
--
Bill Davidsen
He was a full-time professional cat, not some moonlighting
ferret or weasel. He knew about these things.
General Schvantzkoph
I'm using the GSKILL 2G DDR2-800 on an Abit Ab9 Pro. I've been using them
for two months without any problems. I only have two DIMMs in the system
so I can't tell you if there are problems if you put in four 2G DIMMs,
please let us know if you have any issues because I plan to add another 4G
sometime this year.
I'm overclocking my E6700 to 3GHz using the standard Intel coolers, the
system has been stable under heavy loads. I wrote a system stress test
that you might want to use when you bring up your system (assuming you run
Linux).
http://www.polybus.com/sys_basher_web/
It will do a better job of testing your system then memtest86+ because it
runs multithreaded and keeps everything running at 100% utilization.
If you are going to overclock you'll need to buy DIMMs that are faster
than DDR2 533 because the CPU clock and the memory clock come from the
same source. The Abit board offers 533/667 and 800MHz options which
translate into 2, 2.5 and 3X the base clock (for the E6700, I assume the
multipliers are different for lower speed CPUs). To run at 3GHz you set
the base clock to 300MHz which translates into memory speeds of 600MHz,
750MHz and 900MHz. I'm running my memory at 750MHz which is slightly
underclocked for DDR800. Anything more that 533MHz is wasted on a Core2
because of the limitations of the frontside bus (1066 == 2 X 533), however
you need the faster DIMMs so that they can meet timing when you boost the
base clock.
I got everything from NewEgg.
Peter B. P.
> I'm about to build a new core duo quad core system.
Nitpick: The correct name is Core 2 Quad.
> The motherboard I've picked, like many, has only 4 slots for RAM.
> I want to put 2 gig sticks in each slot so I can have a total of 8 gig.
> The ONLY 2 gig sticks I can find of at least DDR-800 speed are at NewEgg by
> two brands I never heard of.
IMO, DDR-800 is overkill unless you have solid experience that it will
boost your computing power. Otherwise, go with DDR-667.
> The brands are "G.SKILL" and "GeIL".
> Can anyone tell me of their experience with these brands?
I have no experiecne with G-skill, but GEIL is IMO a good brand. I've
had some GEIl stocks in my computers running for 2 years now, with no
trouble. Then again, I haven't overcloecked them, either...
>
> OR can someone refer me to a site that sells 2 gig sticks of Kingston,
> Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, or OCZ? Thanks!
Kingston and Cruicial is good. Corsair is supposedly NOT so good. OCZ
Good. Mushkin - no idea (but their heatspreaders look silly...:p).
>
> Finally, if I am going to do a bit of overclocking, are there some important
> things to consider with which type of RAM I buy?
Yes, Latency. As you step up the bus frequency, your latencies will
increase, potentially lowering RAM performance.
--
regards , Peter B. P. - http://titancity.com/blog , http://macplanet.dk
If guns kill, do pencils cause spelling errors?
Scotter
The other poster/answerer, Peter B (thank YOU, too!) mentioned DDR2-667
being the fastest I need and both of you I think mentioned memory timings.
I can think of two reasons to go ahead and get DDR2-800 instead of DDR2-667
and I want to run them by you.
If I overclock my QX6700 to 3ghz or whatever, will that mean any
overclocking of the RAM if I get either of those above-mentioned RAM types?
If the answer to that is "yes" then my assumption would be I'm safer with
the DDR2-800 because it's stock speeds are already higher than the 667.
The other reason I'm leaing toward DDR2-800 is for future expandability like
if later I swap out the QX6700 for some other, faster thing then chances are
my RAM will be more up to the task and less likely to have to switch it,
too. Is this logical?
Finally, timings. I don't need/want a big class on timings. But I do want to
know about stock timings on RAM. Basically, which is better if I intend to
overclock a bit.
At NewEgg I'm seeing stuff for DDR2-800 like:
6-6-6-18
5-5-5-15
4-4-4-12
Which is best?
--
Scotter
-
"General Schvantzkoph" <schvan...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:53hopkF...@mid.individual.net...
General Schvantzkoph
> Wow! GREAT information! One last thing, please?
>
> The other poster/answerer, Peter B (thank YOU, too!) mentioned DDR2-667
> being the fastest I need and both of you I think mentioned memory timings.
>
> I can think of two reasons to go ahead and get DDR2-800 instead of DDR2-667
> and I want to run them by you.
>
> If I overclock my QX6700 to 3ghz or whatever, will that mean any
> overclocking of the RAM if I get either of those above-mentioned RAM types?
> If the answer to that is "yes" then my assumption would be I'm safer with
> the DDR2-800 because it's stock speeds are already higher than the 667.
>
> The other reason I'm leaing toward DDR2-800 is for future expandability like
> if later I swap out the QX6700 for some other, faster thing then chances are
> my RAM will be more up to the task and less likely to have to switch it,
> too. Is this logical?
>
> Finally, timings. I don't need/want a big class on timings. But I do want to
> know about stock timings on RAM. Basically, which is better if I intend to
> overclock a bit.
>
> At NewEgg I'm seeing stuff for DDR2-800 like:
>
> 6-6-6-18
>
> 5-5-5-15
>
> 4-4-4-12
>
> Which is best?
>
>
>
Lower latency is better but won't make a huge difference, if the price is
reasonably similar I'd go with the 4-4-4 or 5-5-5, it's worth a small
premium but not a large one. You won't be able to swap out the bridge chip
so that's going to be the limit on how fast you can run the FSB even if
you do a future CPU upgrade. DDR800 will give you more timing margin to
play with. It won't give you anymore performance but it might make for a
more reliable system because you can significantly underclock it.
BTW if you are planning on overclocking a QX6700 then you should probably
consider a monster cooler like a Thermaltake Big Typhoon. The stock Intel
cooler for the E6700 is more than adequate but the QX6700 consumes 2X the
power of an E6700. I don't know if they include a different cooler with
the QX6700, if it's the same one as the E6700 then you'll definitely want
to get a better one. Also do you really need 4 cores? Unless you are doing
parallel processing two cores should be enough.
DaveW
memory timing is concerned if all four DDR2 slots are filled. You are
realistically limited to 3 slots for stability. No fair, is it?
--
--------
DaveW
"Scotter" <sp...@spam.com> wrote in message
news:45d351f2$0$16698$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
The New Guy
> > The motherboard I've picked, like many, has only 4 slots for RAM.
> > I want to put 2 gig sticks in each slot so I can have a total of 8 gig.
> > The ONLY 2 gig sticks I can find of at least DDR-800 speed are at NewEgg
> > by two brands I never heard of.
> > The brands are "G.SKILL" and "GeIL".
> > Can anyone tell me of their experience with these brands?
> >
> > OR can someone refer me to a site that sells 2 gig sticks of Kingston,
> > Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, or OCZ? Thanks!
> >
> > Finally, if I am going to do a bit of overclocking, are there some
> > important things to consider with which type of RAM I buy?
>
> memory timing is concerned if all four DDR2 slots are filled. You are
> realistically limited to 3 slots for stability. No fair, is it?
I know people using all 4 slots but I've also heard of a lot of people
having trouble. Does it help to set the timings more or less
aggressively? Does it help to have closely matched ram sticks from
the same manufacturer and chip numbers? If this is really the case,
its very misleading how they are marketing these motherboards.
General Schvantzkoph
I'm using 4 DIMMs on two of my A64 systems, it works fine. However you do
want some extra margin if you are going to use four double sided DIMMs. If
you step the clock speed back a grade (DDR800 @ 667, DDR667 @ 533) you
should be fine. Which means that for an overclocked Core2 you'll want
DDR800 so that it can be run at an effective 600MHz (2 x 300Mhz).
Bill Davidsen
> Wow! GREAT information! One last thing, please?
>
> The other poster/answerer, Peter B (thank YOU, too!) mentioned DDR2-667
> being the fastest I need and both of you I think mentioned memory timings.
>
> I can think of two reasons to go ahead and get DDR2-800 instead of DDR2-667
> and I want to run them by you.
>
> If I overclock my QX6700 to 3ghz or whatever, will that mean any
> overclocking of the RAM if I get either of those above-mentioned RAM types?
> If the answer to that is "yes" then my assumption would be I'm safer with
> the DDR2-800 because it's stock speeds are already higher than the 667.
>
> The other reason I'm leaing toward DDR2-800 is for future expandability like
> if later I swap out the QX6700 for some other, faster thing then chances are
> my RAM will be more up to the task and less likely to have to switch it,
> too. Is this logical?
>
> Finally, timings. I don't need/want a big class on timings. But I do want to
> know about stock timings on RAM. Basically, which is better if I intend to
> overclock a bit.
>
> At NewEgg I'm seeing stuff for DDR2-800 like:
>
> 6-6-6-18
>
> 5-5-5-15
>
> 4-4-4-12
>
> Which is best?
>
>
>
because it doesn't make a huge difference. It might contribute to
stability, however.
Bill Davidsen
> Most modern motherboards, INCLUDING high end ones, become unstable as far as
> memory timing is concerned if all four DDR2 slots are filled. You are
> realistically limited to 3 slots for stability. No fair, is it?
>
boards will run memtest86+ at 20% o/c with all slots filled. ASUS also
allows o/c the memory with the CPU at rated speed, so you can take some
advantage of faster memory. I use Kingston and Crucial memory if I have
a choice.
I have heard of this problem, but I'm not sure if it's caused by low
voltage from the power supply, etc, or board design.
NOTE: some board's BIOS will let you tune the memory voltage, that might
be useful in some cases. You must judge if it's a safe thing on your
system, of course.