what type of ram to get!!!!!

Ok now that I have a migraine trying to understand all of these threads on ram Ive come to the conclusion I need a little help.In the one thread it says if I dont get enough ram that will create a bottleneck at the ram but on the other side if I get to much I will have one at the cpu.Im going to purchase an Abit ITmax ver 2,not so much to overclock mostly because of all of the features.Now my processor is a 1.8ghz 512 northwood 400mhz...with that in the motherboard how do you figure how much ram will be perfect match so everything flows smoothly... I looking at 512 at minimum but pc what ie:2100.2700,3000,3200? Thanks for any help...

Here is what I understand. Memory is like desk space, the more you have the quicker you can do multiple tasks, but if you have to little space you have to swap things around a lot to get anything done, which is slower. HD is like the filing cabinet, and CPU speed is like your own personal speed at the task you are performing. The bottleneck would occur if you had too little memory for the applications you were running, and your machine would have to swap pages to the hard drive (MUCH SLOWER). I would recommend good ol 2100 for the 1.8 if you arent going to OC it. The amount depends on what you do. For games I would recommend at minimum 256 MB and highly recommend at least 512 MB. In addition, I think the first Northys were 2.26, but I could be wrong. I hope this helps.

what type of memory you should get also depends on what your motherboard can support, and its features. look in your manual or the manufacturer's site to find out. or you can post what kind of mobo you have & more often than not, someone who knows about that mobo will help you out.

btw, if you're running winxp 512 would give you better performance.

He mentioned the Abit IT7 MAX2. This is the mobo ive been doin research on. Its DDR.

i think the first northies were 2.26, but like tbreds they then released the lower speed ones

Nicely Said

Renigade said:

Here is what I understand. Memory is like desk space, the more you have the quicker you can do multiple tasks, but if you have to little space you have to swap things around a lot to get anything done, which is slower. HD is like the filing cabinet, and CPU speed is like your own personal speed at the task you are performing. The bottleneck would occur if you had too little memory for the applications you were running, and your machine would have to swap pages to the hard drive (MUCH SLOWER). I would recommend good ol 2100 for the 1.8 if you arent going to OC it. The amount depends on what you do. For games I would recommend at minimum 256 MB and highly recommend at least 512 MB. In addition, I think the first Northys were 2.26, but I could be wrong. I hope this helps.

Click to expand...

i must commend you on your post. i have so much trouble getting folks to understand that a 20 gig hdd, doesn't mean they have 20 gigs of memory. and so on...

this gives me a nice simple way to explain to the new pc enthusiasts.

thanks, and keep up the good work...

that's what i get for skimming through it twice...lol looked at the site and it only supports up to pc2700. that gives you ddr333mhz, which is rated to run on a 166fsb. you can oc your ram to however much it will let you, though...your fsb is rated to run at 533.