512mb or 1 gig?

[TomaHawk47x]

im currently searching for RAM for my upcoming nf7-s rev2 and barton 2500+. i WILL overclock. whether or not i will OC the ram depends on how good it is. i want to get the pc3200 corsair xms LL ram, but 1 gig is $300. however, 512mb (2x256) is roughly half that price. i know i will have to upgrade to a gig eventaully, but thats what concerns me. if i upgrade to a gig after i have the 2 256mb sticks in dual channal by adding a 512mb stick of xms LL (filling up the 3rd and final slot), will i still have dual channal? if so, how much would performance drop compared to 2 512mb sticks? or would i be better of just getting a gig of cheaper ram?

[TheMatrixHasYou]

Dual Channel really isn't that great on AMD platforms, but it gives huge performance increases on an Intel platform. NewEgg has Buffalo PC3200 with Winbond chips for $94 for 512 MB, so if you can spend double that, you might want to get that. Otherwise, just get a 512 stick of Corsair and save up for another.

[cruc1fy]

Don't let Dual Channel be your deciding factor.

I'd say go for a 1GB DIMM so if you ever want to max it out you'll be able to.

[TheMatrixHasYou]

I don't think any of the major companies make their good RAM in 1 GB DIMM sizes. The largest I've seen for high speed, low latency stuff is 512 MB DIMMs.

[d0z]

Have you ever heard about OCZ memory?
how good are they? they claimed to be better than Corsair

[wannaoc]

i know i will have to upgrade to a gig eventaully, but thats what concerns me.

Why spend a bunch of money on ram now when come time to upgrade what you have now will be out dated? Unless you do heavy graphical or sound editing you don't need 1 gig now. Ya, ya people are going to say "bf1942 uses up all my memory and could use 1 gig", well I run 512mb and play bf1942 and it runs smooth as ice. But if you are willing to spend multi-hundreds of dollars on ram that you won't use then go for it.

Also keep in mind that a couple years ago people said that we would HAVE to use 1 gig to run the software of today. Well they were wrong then, I would spend money on 512mb of high quality ram versus spending the same on 1 gig "decent" ram any day. Just something to think about.

[TomaHawk47x]

i would get the matched pair of 256mb sticks (512mb total) of the corsair xms low latency (ive heard ppl hitting 225fsb on the nf7-s rev2) for $168, BUT....how long will 512mb be enough? im going to be doing ALOT of gaming..

[wannaoc]

If you buy 512 just get one stick, that way if you do upgrade in the near future you can have dual channel 1 gig and its cheaper anyway. Plus duel is just manufacturer hype and only really helps Intel boards.

[z1bluecat]

Originally posted by TomaHawk47x
... if i upgrade to a gig after i have the 2 256mb sticks in dual channal by adding a 512mb stick of xms LL (filling up the 3rd and final slot), will i still have dual channal?

If you check abits webpage for the NF7-S I belive it states that if you are using dual channel mode you can only fill up two of the slots (1 and 3 I think) for a max of 1 Gig at 2 x 512 PC3200 Dual mode memory. Can anyone else verify this?

[wannaoc]

You can't use 3 sticks, four works though for duel.

[method().man]

I don't think dual channel is that big of a deal - even with Intel boards/chips. With single channel @ 216 MHz DDR RAM, we were getting pretty close to saturating the bus with as much bandwidth as the P4 can take. The good thing about dual channel is you can get really high bandwidth without pushing the memory to the bleeding edge of its performance curve. Even with high performance RAM in dual channel configuration, you're only gonna get a few percentage points here and there in most applications. The place where you're really gonna see the difference is in benchmarks.

[cruc1fy]

Originally posted by method().man
I don't think dual channel is that big of a deal - even with Intel boards/chips. With single channel @ 216 MHz DDR RAM, we were getting pretty close to saturating the bus with as much bandwidth as the P4 can take. The good thing about dual channel is you can get really high bandwidth without pushing the memory to the bleeding edge of its performance curve. Even with high performance RAM in dual channel configuration, you're only gonna get a few percentage points here and there in most applications. The place where you're really gonna see the difference is in benchmarks.

yah - It (Dual Channel memory) is pretty much a gimick (like increases in AGP)... at least for current FSB controlled machines. Perhaps the architecture of the 64-bit procs (Opteron, G5 - not sure about the Itaniums) - the memory controller is on the chip so there really isn't a FSB - will allow for more meaningful and effective use.

[nikolasmor]

I've got 2x512 Corsair XMS3200 Cas2 and I got 1 bad stick, the other doesn't like beigh over clocked, even at very relaxed setting. Right now I only have one module in my machine