Help Picking Ram 400-500$ CDN Budget Link to store inside

Ok this is for a friend of mine, I loaned him one of my 512's so that he could get his new rig up and running quicker. He is buying pretty high end stuff he wants to spend between 400-475$ for 2x 512mb sticks of ram. I am not a ram god I know the basics, look for the lowest cas and the highest speed. But I am a bit shaddy on which brands are currently working the best. So I decided to post here to the ram guys and ask ya all for your opinion.

http://www.anitec.ca/?mode=category&catid=113

Here is the store, which set do you think. Note the prices are in CDN$ so dont be alarmed when you see the prices. Knock off about 30% to get the US$ price.

This is the pair we are leaning too, but if you see something that is better, please post back here and let us know.

http://www.anitec.ca/?mode=product_detail&pid=2077

Thanks In Advance for all your help.

The system is a P4 3.0C on an Asus P4P800 Deluxe board that he is going to water cool and wants to hit close to 4ghz with.

Get some OCZ PC3700EB and a OCZ DDR Booster. the P4P800 only allows 2.85 volts to ram. It's not gonna be enough to get low timings and high speeds. If you wanna save a few bucks I do suggest handpicking KVR for Hynix BT D43. I've been seeing at least 230mhz at 3,3,3,8. It's good stuff for a good price.

That is what I have the Hynix BT-D43 in my machine and that is what I loaned him. A local computer store had a wicked deal on the stuff when it was first hitting the market, 90$ CDN about 65USD for a 512MB stick of PC3200 DDR400. This was like 6-8 months ago so it was a REAL good deal back then. I bought a gig of it.

(see old thread) http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=284624&highlight=hynix

But I am really getting sick of the loose timmings. He is willing to spend the money for tight timmings and fast ram so that is what we are looking for.

He will be doing video editing and encoding with it so he is looking to squeak every bit of performance he can. He will probably up it to 2 gig before the year is out.

Thanks for the tips though. I have never heard of ram boosters. Have to look into it.

In Video editing timings don't play such a big roll. It's about bandwidth and amount. In gaming it's Timing and Amount. If you're going the highspeed route you'll be looking at high timings. Either OCZ eb series or BH6/5 with OCZ DDR booster is the only way to get low timings with high speeds.

I had no idea gamming and hard core video editing was any diffrent when it came to ram. Thanks for the tip on that.

As for gamming he does play a lot of UT2K4 and is dieing for Need For Speed Underground 2 to come out. (I am as well for that matter, the game looks wicked)

i have ocz 3500eb with a 3.0c and a p4p800 and it runs at 250 with 3-3-2-5 timings and only 2.85 volts. if i were to get an ocz booster it would surely be able to run even higher and tighter then that. this is great ram for my setup and your freinds is the same as mine. sooooo.... i would suggest that he gets either this ram or some of the 3700eb stuff if he wants to go that extra little bit higher still. in my opinion its his best option if he wants serious performance.

edit: this stuff is great gaming ram as well.

If I were him, I'd get a gig of BH5 from e-bay, then use the OCZ DDR Booster and run 250 FSB 1:1 @ 2-2-2-6 timings. The BH-5 should be able to do it with 3.3-3.5 volts, which is apparently still a save level for BH-5

Well we were ready to buy the good stuff, and went to the store, "sorry out of stock" we called two other stores and no one had any of the ram we wanted in stock.

We just gave up and asked to see what they had in Hynix he said he had some 512mb sticks of PC3200 I asked to take a look at them.

We were in luck, BT-D43 the price was right. 112$ CDN about 75$ USD each. So we brough the 2 home and asked to bring in 2 more. We also picked up a couple of copper heat spreaders, dropped them into the machine ramped up 2.5-3-3-7 and set the FSB to 235, mem 1-1 cranked the voltage up to 2.85 saved changes and booted perfect. Ran some quick benchies all seems good. Tried 250 and no go, tried 240 and had a reboot. But we think that is becuase the PSU is crap at the moment, waiting for an Antec True Control 550 to show up.

We are going to toss 2 gigs of the BT-D43 512's in it with the copper heat spreaders and call it good enough. Thanks for the help guys, even though we ended up not using the ram we wanted it seems to be all good.