value vs good stuff

i'm looking to get some new ram.

i dont have much to spend, so should i go with 1 gig of corsair value select or half gig of corsair XMS (2-3-3-6) ?

any other suggestions appreciated

Do you have to stick with corsair?

First off, a gig of RAM versus a half gig of RAM is heavily dependant on what you intend to be doing with your computer. The decision between a gig and a half gig is arguably more important than the memory-type decision itself, at least from a cost standpoint.

For example:

I swear by a half gig of RAM. When I "downgraded" from a gig to a half gig, I noticed no peformance hit to any of my games. Loading times increased slightly. In synthetic game-based benchmarking, a small performance hit was present. Half gig sets of memory are known to overclock further than gig sets, something which I really enjoy.

One of my friends uses his machine mostly for gaming, owns a mid-end video card, and a mid-end processor. For him, a gig of RAM makes all the difference, and makes or breaks decent in-game performance. My friend doesn't overclock, and runs everything at stock.

The two of us have very different systems, and very different memory needs. Most people prefer a gig of memory.



All that said, the memory decision otherwise really rests in the chip type on the memory sticks that you purchase. I would strongly reccomend TCCD/TCC5 memory, for it's all-purpose excellence. It overclocks well, doesn't need high voltages, can run with tight timings, can scale to quite a high frequency, and most importantly, can be had for fairly cheap .


Check out these two excellent and fairly inexpensive 512 meg sets of TCCD/TCC5 on newegg:

G.Skill PC4400 LC - LINK - guaranteed to 275 MHz with 2.5-4-4 timings, $99. Inexpensive, should overclock fairly well. Won't overclock as well as G.Skill's higher grade memory, but is nonetheless some excellent RAM for the price.

G.Skill PC4400 LE - LINK - guaranteed to 275 Mhz with 2.5-3-3 timings, $132. This would be my personal pick, these sticks are known to scale very, very well. If you only need a half gig of memory, this stuff will not dissapoint. Pricier than the LC, but well worth it if you plan to overclock aggressively. And if you don't plan on overclocking, the 275 MHz 2.5-3-3 guarantee still nets you some awesome memory performance right out of the box.


And some 1024 meg sets of TCCD:

Corsair XMS 3200XL - LINK - guaranteed to 200 Mhz, with 2-2-2 timings, $190. I haven't read a lot about this memory, but it should do well given that it's TCCD binned for tight timings at a low voltage. Decent price for what you get. And, Corsair manufactures a great stick of RAM.

G.Skill PC4400 LC - LINK - same as the LC above, but a 1024 meg set. $236.

G.Skill PC4400 LE - LINK - same as the LE above, but a 1024 meg set. $256 and worth every penny if you plan to overclock.

OCZ PC4800 - LINK - OCZ's premium TCC5 memory. Guaranteed to run at 300 MHz 2.5-4-4 out of the box. This stuff costs an arm and a leg, but is still worth mentioning. Expensive, for the price I would prefer the G.Skill memory.


The above are not the cheapest memory options in the world, although they are quite reasonable. Generic RAM can be had for less than $100 per gig.

However, if you intend to overclock and want excellent performance from a low-voltage memory IC, the above are all excellent choices. TCCD/TCC5 really is the king of fall-purpose memory, you can't go wrong with a good TCCD/TCC5 memory stick . For around ~$100, the half gig sets I linked to are superb choices.

First determine how much ram you need by configuring windows system monitor (or some similar program) to monitor your physical RAM and pagefile usage. These days, most people find that with 512MB, they wind up using the windows pagefile. That, of course, will murder performance. The fastest hard disk is orders of magnitude slower than the slowest RAM.

The GSkill value ram is abou $100 for 2x512 and it's CL2.

I put my memory in single channel and ran aquamark. I think I go someting like 45900. When I took one out I got something like 45000. I ran them in single channel so that the only variable would be the amount of memory. If I were you, I would DEFINETLY get the fast 2x 256MB instead of the 2x 512MB.

jjv687 said:

I put my memory in single channel and ran aquamark. I think I go someting like 45900. When I took one out I got something like 45000. I ran them in single channel so that the only variable would be the amount of memory. If I were you, I would DEFINETLY get the fast 2x 256MB instead of the 2x 512MB.

Click to expand...

That makes sense if you're just going to run Aquamark or other things that will never need more than 512MB of RAM. But that slight difference in the benchmark is nothing compared to the performance hit for swapping memory to the pagefile. If you will use more than 512MB, the 2x256 configuration is like putting a smaller gas tank in a race car to save weight but then having to get out and push when it runs out of fuel.

I do agree with Otter. 512mb works much of the time but a gig works nearly all of the time. I like the odds of a gig much better.

Well, I noticed no difference in either game or application performance, or I would probably use a gig . Mind, I only game at 1024x768, with high detail and as much eye candy as possible.

You need to choose based on your budget, and your uses of your computer.

What's you budget? You can usually get a gig of decent good stuff(not TCCD/TCC5) for around $150.

You definitely want a gig of RAM. 512MB isn't going to enough to run newer games very well for much longer. Alot of users are going to start moving to 2 gigs in the coming months. Just buy whatever you can afford in 2x512MB.

Or if youre on a tight budget but definetly will want fast RAM later on then buy 1x 512 MB of some speedy stuff for now and buy the other 512 MB stick later when you get more cash.

If your on a tight budget just get come Crucial Value RAM (~$80 for 1GB). Low latency RAM will only show slight benefits that do not make the extra cost worth it at all. Also more RAM woul show way more benefits then lower latencies.

Also it won't effect overclocking at all either. Just use a divider.

I went from 512 mb of Geil PC3500 and am now using 1GB of Corsair Value Ram and the difference in performance is great. Before when running HL2 with everything maxed out my system would stutter every couple seconds, and now when running HL2 with everything maxed out it runs smooth like butter, and loading takes 15 seconds instead of 30.

HL2 is also EXTREMELY memory intensive. I used to get errors in HL2 because my RAM was overclocked when even Memtest wouldn't give me errors after a 24 hour test. So I wouldn't base how much of a difference 1 Gig makes of 512 MB just on HL2. Unless of course that's what you plan on playing.

Also, I recommend the 1 Gig of Value RAM option.

Here is a comparison of low latencys and stuff.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y