Ram for Athalon 64

Well im stuck between land of Athalon 64/FX/waiting for next iteration/pentium 5. But in all of this I was wondering what ram to get, as i need a "powerhouse pc" pretty badly. So I was thinking of getting the corsair memory with the little LED's, and my question was what is the best, the faster with looser timings, or the "slower" with tighter timings. I was leaning towards faster as it would be "more in sync" with the "fsb" of the athalon 64, but every1 always says timings are better so what do you all think?

If your getting an Athlon 64 3200+ purchase either Mushkin Black Level 2 PC3200/PC3500 or Kingston HyperX 3200 (NON A; rated 2-2-2 NOT 2-3-2). These both use Winbond BH-5 chips. The performance of BH-5 chips with the Athlon 64 3200+ (NOT THE FX) is simply amazing. There has already been situations with BH-5 running at 290MHz (DDR580) at 2-2-2 timings, albeit to get this FSB with a Athlon 64 you have to have extreme cooling and lower the multiplier using windows-based software (but the extreme cooling does not effect memory to any great extent). More common is 240MHz (DDR480) at 2-2-2 timings.

Check the Sticky for prices.

hm thnx ill look into that what would you recommend for a athalon 64fx?

I can't recall, but one of them requires the use of REGISTERED memory, which will not be used in the later revision coming out in the first Q of 2004, so I would stay away from that one.

i think corsair has some PC4000 registered memory, except the timings are not that great

High FSB> Tight timings

I think only the FX-51 needs registered memory

The AMD FX-51 (and AMD Opterons) are the processors that need Registered Memory. Mushkin and Corsair's PC3200-Registerred both use CH-5 chips, and I've heard rumors of a XMS4000-Registered that prolly woudl be using Hynix D43 chips. One of those 3 would probably be best if you were to use an AMD FX-51.

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ ($425 retail at ZipZoomFly.com) do not require registered memory (and thus use regular old memory). If your gonna get an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, by all means, get something with BH-5 chips. Performance on systems with Athlon 64 3200+ is amazing with these chips.

alright thnx all im going to get something with bh-5 chips and highest possible fsb possible within reason.