Best Memory for an XP Mobile At My Pricepoint/Goals? (+General Memory Questions)

Hi, I'm a newb. Now on to business...

I'm planning on building a budget gaming rig, and like most people in my position, I'm looking for great performance at low cost. Athlon Mobile 2600+ at guaranteed "I" stepping seems to be the CPU for me. And I know I'm getting an NF7-S. Now how about the RAM?

I figure I can reasonably afford about $100 worth of RAM to get me by for a little while. At the MOST --> $120. Again, I stress how I'm on a really tight budget. My OC goal is to get a rock-solid 2400MHz to 2500MHz fully stable. That would be great! I already have an SLK900a and a 92mm Tornado is on the way.

I've been reading great things about different $130 to $160 - 512mb sticks of RAM, but is that stuff really necessary to achieve what I'm looking to get out of the OC?

For instance, OCZ EB seems to be legendary on some level, but I can't find any of it anywhere for my price range.

So I'm basically just looking for opinions here as to which RAM I should go with for my budget pricepoint in order to hit the performance goals I have.

I really appreciate any and all help I can get. Thanks!

PS: What's the difference between THIS CORSAIR and THAT CORSAIR ?

And also, what's the track record for refurbished RAM? This PC3200 Hyper-X, RIGHT HERE, is pretty much in my price range. Should it do everything that a new stick of the same stuff would do?

Again, I really appreciate your help!

ram is as important for a system as the cpu/mainboard/vid card is. in other words, you probably dont want to skimp on it. i guess you can find 512mb for your price range, but most peole nowadays recommend a gig. And with some of the newer games coming and even a few current ones, a gig just runs them better. Also if 512mb is all youre going to be getting, perhaps you shud be looking at 2x256mb dual channel kits. Granted the nf2 chipset doesnt utilize dual channel like a p4 or the 939 a64, but perhaps in the future you will have a need for it.

Im pretty sure the only difference between that corsair stuff is the heatspreaders. The pt = platinum from what i can gather and the timings and price are the same so they appear to be one in the same.

And as for the refurb'ed ram, i have no experience with any kind of refurbed item so im not sure what to tell ya about that.

DJCorpse said:

ram is as important for a system as the cpu/mainboard/vid card is. in other words, you probably dont want to skimp on it. i guess you can find 512mb for your price range, but most peole nowadays recommend a gig. And with some of the newer games coming and even a few current ones, a gig just runs them better. Also if 512mb is all youre going to be getting, perhaps you shud be looking at 2x256mb dual channel kits. Granted the nf2 chipset doesnt utilize dual channel like a p4 or the 939 a64, but perhaps in the future you will have a need for it.

Im pretty sure the only difference between that corsair stuff is the heatspreaders. The pt = platinum from what i can gather and the timings and price are the same so they appear to be one in the same.

And as for the refurb'ed ram, i have no experience with any kind of refurbed item so im not sure what to tell ya about that.

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Thanks for the info and reply.

About the amount of ram, I can only afford to go 512 as of right now. But I certainly plan on an upgrade from that as soon as I can gather the money. The only reason I'd rather not go 2x256 is because eventually I would like to be able to go 2x512 in dual channel, the board only has 3 slots, and (as I've read) will not run all three slots in dual channel mode. 512 now, 512 later if all goes according to plan.

Now would it be reasonable and likely for me to hit a rock solid 2400MHz to 2500MHz on a $100 to $120 stick of 512 or I would need some uber-expensive mem to get that? I guess I'm just looking for about a 220fsb or so.

One other thing: what matters more for XP systems - timings or speed? I can probably get high speed memory (PC4000) with relatively poor timings for the same price that I could get low-speed memory (PC3200) with very low timings. I'm not sure which would be the better for my mobile XP.

I really appreciate the help.

xp's definitely like tighter timings, so you would be better off getting some pc3200 with the tightest timings possible for your budget. that kingston stuff had a bit better timings than the corsair, but the kingston was also a refurb. I would think you would be ok getting that corsair stuff. i have that corsair ram myself (black heatspreaders) and i have a gig of ocz 3700 EB. But i gotta say, i like the corsair and itll run your mobile well.

In the cooler months my usual oc with the corsair is 210mhz (210 x 12 = 2520mhz) with 2.5-3-3-11 timings, but anything over that i got errors in memtest. i didnt do much tweaking so they might be able to oc a bit higher, but im not sure if they will hit 220 or not. Check out this review for some info: http://www.overclockers.com/articles1008/ (the review is for the xms pro stuff, but they also used the normal xms stuff youre looking at and they got it stable up to 217mhz)

And as for you reaching 2400-2500 mhz on the cpu with that corsair ram, that shudnt be too terribly hard. As long as you get pc3200 you shud be able to run 200 x 12 or even 200 x 12.5, but youre correct in wanting to oc the ram a bit for a higher bus speed.

DJCorpse said:

xp's definitely like tighter timings, so you would be better off getting some pc3200 with the tightest timings possible for your budget. that kingston stuff had a bit better timings than the corsair, but the kingston was also a refurb. I would think you would be ok getting that corsair stuff. i have that corsair ram myself (black heatspreaders) and i have a gig of ocz 3700 EB. But i gotta say, i like the corsair and itll run your mobile well.

In the cooler months my usual oc with the corsair is 210mhz (210 x 12 = 2520mhz) with 2.5-3-3-11 timings, but anything over that i got errors in memtest. i didnt do much tweaking so they might be able to oc a bit higher, but im not sure if they will hit 220 or not. Check out this review for some info: http://www.overclockers.com/articles1008/ (the review is for the xms pro stuff, but they also used the normal xms stuff youre looking at and they got it stable up to 217mhz)

And as for you reaching 2400-2500 mhz on the cpu with that corsair ram, that shudnt be too terribly hard. As long as you get pc3200 you shud be able to run 200 x 12 or even 200 x 12.5, but youre correct in wanting to oc the ram a bit for a higher bus speed.

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Awesome response! Thanks! Just one more thing... for now

Concerning RAM, how does pricing usually go with sites like Newegg? Are price drops common? I keep reading people review RAM saying "I got this when it was only $95.00" and "I'll get some more when the price goes back down" - stuff like that. How does that usually go?

Especially when I see that people had gotten ram like OCZ EB (512) for $120.00, and now it's some forty dollars higher... will we likely see significant price drops on any decent memory over the next couple weeks?

This is all new to me... just trying to get a decent understanding of how it goes down.

**PS** Does anybody here have an opinion on refurbished ram? I found THIS and while I'm no ram expert, that looks like an absolute steal for the price! And since it's rated at 434, I can always return it if it doesn't hit that, right? Thanks.

ram pricing can fluctuate daily, but it usually wont make dramatic jumps from day to day or anything like that. Im really not sure what ddr prices are going to do. ddr2 is on the horizon now so that will definitely make an impact on ddr pricing but how much and which way itll go (up or down) im really not sure about. Perhaps another member a bit more knowledgeable could chime in here?!

And as for the EB being only $120 a stick?? I have never heard of any flavor of it being that cheap. Maybe the pc3200 was $135 - 140 but i dont think it got as low as 120/stick, did it??? My gig of pc3700 was $340 and i saw a week later the price had gone up to $360 so i was glad i got mine when i did.

But speaking of ocz stuff, take a look at this stick too. from the newegg reviews, it seems to do pretty well and its a few bucks cheaper than that corsair: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-833&depa=1 Here is its ocz page too, and there a bunch of reviews of that particular stick towards the bottom of the page: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/OCZ+DDR+PC-3200+Rev+2

Just so you know , 2400mhz even with pc2700 ram will be easy for the cpu/Mb that you stated . Mine does it fine @ 2500mhz.
Im sitting here waiting for the mail man ! i want my Sp-97 !!!

Xdrive said:

I found THIS and while I'm no ram expert, that looks like an absolute steal for the price! And since it's rated at 434, I can always return it if it doesn't hit that, right? Thanks.

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It's rated at 434 but look at the timings it needs to reach thats speed, you will benefit having better timings. The timings of that ram are way too relaxed.
TheNewGuy

I say buy Balistix. It's so cheap for what you get.

Jimmy53 said:

I say buy Balistix. It's so cheap for what you get.

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I heard many reports that say Crucial Ballistix ram are horrible overclockers.

Not from what ive seen : The Unofficial Official Ballistix Results Thread