pc3200 or pc2700

samsung pc3200 512mb: $136
samsung pc2700 512mb: $121

who thinks i shoudl go for which one, and why? ill mostly be doing gaming. i plan on buying an asus a7n8x, a t-bred 1800, a radeon 9500 pro. i will overclock the t-bred 1800 a little bit, but in all likeliness i will NOT overclock the ram at all.

If you will not overclock the ram at all- buy pc 2100. However, I dont see a reason not to overclock the front side bus too- that should increase performance much more. I suppose you could run it asnyc, but thats really not worth the issuses associated with that.
Between 3200 and 2700- Check out those 3200 sticks- often 3200 is really just 3200. Also, make sure that the ram is actually samsung- and DO NOT BUY FROM BUY AIB if thats where you saw those prices. They have been known to send pc 133 instead of pc3200 and refuse to rma.

well, how easy is it to overclock ram so it makes a noticeable difference? i hadn't really read up on it, as im new to overclocking, i figured id just start with the processor, and once i did that, look into other things. ill start looking into it now--thx

Its not necessarily something that you do separatly anyays. Allow me to explain:
The speed a cpu runs at is a product of the multiplier times the front side bus. The ram runs at the speed of the front side bus (unless it is asynch in which case it runs at some ratio to the front side bus). Either way the speed of the ram is related to the front side bus. So- If you increase the front side bus you will increase the cpu and ram speed at the same time.
since you have a tbred proc- you can adjust the multipliers. However, you are better off sticking to front side bus overclocking for the time being- Its more n00b proof
Keep in mind that you will have to increase the voltage as you overclock the proc. On air cooling- dont put it above 1.75 for that processor.

when you OC... you will also OC the RAM....


If you want to OC... get PC 3200 or PC 3500...

If you don't want to OC... get PC2700 or PC 2100

thx a lot.. i had completely neglected looking past cpu overclocking at all...

given the same mhz of cpu you will see an increase of performance with more fsb so you definatly want to oc the memory. If you do oc you will want faster memory.

I ended up replacing my memory after having it only a short while so that I could oc it and still use aggressive timings. Depending how much you want to oc you may want to look into something like corsair xms. I have the pc3200 cas2.0 and its real nice. You can run aggressive timings and still oc a good deal.

where u find samsung 3200?
i havent seen it is why i ask.
for that price differance get the 3200.
but most peoples system even here cant even reach samsungs 2700 max fsb with c2 timings.

Yea, by increasing the FSB you're effectively overclocking everything. That's why you need deviders to keep the PCI/AGP and HDD in spec (please correct me if incorrect)