ok lets settle this

well do i realy need to have tight timings to get good frames, and get a good OC? i dont think i do, and thus i have decided to just go with some OCZ value sticks (2x512mb) and call it at that, i dont feel the need to be able to hit insane clocks with them eaither, since i will be running A64, and i can just use dividers galore.

any thoughts on this? and am i going astray, and being totaly wrong in my desision?

I do notice some improved performance the tighter the timings get, many people outright swear by them.

I suppose you could look at it the same way as buying a Dodge Neon vs buying a Mercedez Benz.... both cars will get you to a destination however one can certainly move faster and in much better style than the other......

i thought the same thing,i bought 2x wintec ampo wich did oc a little 215 i think 2.5-3-3-7
but i got bored and bought better.and lowered my timings to 2.0-2-2-5 and i do see a slight differance in windows speed alone.alot more is seen when benchmarking.

id say i was able to knock off 4 minutes off of superpi 32m with better ram.
also bwith better ram you also gain more choices to use with those deviders.

if you dont tweak much or care about fast times while running benches it may just be fine to buy the cheaper sticks.
but the ocz UTT value VX is cheap as long as you can supply the volts needed.

Gotta agree with the above posts. Cheap RAM will do the job, but in the long run you're gonna wish you got some "decent" stuff now. If overclocking and benchmarking aren't your thing, you'll be well served with some cheap value memory.

i do want to OC, but i dont want to blow my wad on some stuff that wont make that much difference, i have never used the newer stuff, so i realy dont know it verywell. right now my budget is about 80-100 bucks on ram, not 150 for some V-VX. i know i cant afford any BH-5, CH-5, TCCD, TCC5, or UTT, all that stuff is way out of my league.

now what i have been comntemplating is getting some cheap junk to start with, quality junk, but cheap, i am trying to have my rig up and running by the time i go to boise, to have a LAN party with my friends, Celeron_Phreak and AMD_Phreak. and by that time from now, i can only pull together around 650-700. and i am already blowing that mostly on the rest of the system.

DFI NF3 UT 250gb
AMD A64 2800+
6800gt

and then whatever ram that i end up getting. i have been looking at alot of the value ram, from Geil to Kingston.

so if you guys, the more experienced ones, could guide me to the right choice. i am just irritated that to get the "max" i have to pay out the ***.

my current OCing goals are aroun 2.4ghz -2.6ghz. on air, i will have a XP-90 and a good fan. all this in a Lian-Li PC-71. with plenty of cooling. the only thing i have left is to figure out the one component that is constently plaguing me.

thanks again guys, finally me, mr. computer neadrethal, will finally be able to function with the rest of society

Well there have been some tests showing that although RAM with tight timings or a high OC will provide much better benchmark scores in real world tests (such as games and encoding different types of media) there is only a small increase in performance. There are some real world instances though that expensive RAM will make a difference but if you plan on playing games mostly, which it seems like you are, then cheaper RAM may be better off for you. These tests were all done on an A64 platform by the way. I believe Intel takes a sizable performance hit from using a divider. Unless you are a benchmark freak then RAM may be the component with one of the worst cost to performance ratios of your PC. But also with cheap RAM you don't get to tinker with it as much because they usually don't OC much over their spec. So cheap RAM isn't much fun, but at least it's cheap.

i bench mark when i first get the system, and after upgrades, just to fool around. for me i dont care, but for a refference done by others, thats nice.

i game ALOT, hell even with this cheapo bugger, i game every day

$106 for ocz value vx utt
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227213

the nf3 will push 3.1v and more depending on how how you can crank up the 3.3v line on your psu if it has pots.
but even so 3.1v will get you normally 230 2.0-2-2-5 if you get lucky with good sticks.
mine also do 200 2.0-2-2-4 with 2.6v

so you dont need to spend alot of money to get good stuff just need to know what the good stuff is.
also i hear the twinmos SP are great ocing UTT on the cheap also.

It's all about bandwith. Go real fast, get more done in less clock cycles (tight settings) or a combination of both.

there was a big test on the effects of timings a few months back here it is:


READ THIS: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=3779121&posted=1#post3779121

deathstar13 said:

$106 for ocz value vx utt
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227213

the nf3 will push 3.1v and more depending on how how you can crank up the 3.3v line on your psu if it has pots.
but even so 3.1v will get you normally 230 2.0-2-2-5 if you get lucky with good sticks.
mine also do 200 2.0-2-2-4 with 2.6v

so you dont need to spend alot of money to get good stuff just need to know what the good stuff is.
also i hear the twinmos SP are great ocing UTT on the cheap also.

Click to expand...

hmm didnt know that was that cheap. but what exactly is the difference between that value version, and this one?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146900

if it is that cheap, either way, i am getting it!


and jcw122 that helped tremendosly, now i know what i should be shooting for

Here's my big thing on when people WASTE money on tight timing RAM.
So, say you got and spend 250 bucks on a gig of super sweet stuff and buy a 6800GT and some other good stuff...
Now compare that rigs gaming benchmarks to:
someone spends 150-200 on a gig of decent...hell even value RAM and gets a 6800Ultra with the extra cash, who's gonna have the better gaming benchmarks? the ultra is...
So my point, if you play games price out the cheapest RAM you can get for your FSB speed, then max out the video card and then if you have cash left over, look for better ram. that links shows 1-2fps increase from CAS 2 to 3? I don't know about you but that's pretty **** poor for 50 bucks if your not running a top of the line video card.

And as far as "feel" and "seems" faster, that's worthless, people are TERRIBLE at judging things...placebo effects, confirmation biases...I mean there's tons of different psychological terms to describe those, you have to stick with numbers to be reliable.

the differance is the VX which costs alot more is hand tested alot more.the value vx is just tested to run 2.5-4-4-8 2.6v i believe.
you save money as they dont test it higher.

its not failed vx in my understanding either.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820218405
that is the twinmos UTT btw,pls research this is still a good buy as i dont know alot on these but ive seen people swear by these as much as the value VX

i love my value VX for what it is.i like my Tcc5 more but hey i paid alot more.mainly because its more flexable is why.

ajrettke said:

Here's my big thing on when people WASTE money on tight timing RAM.
So, say you got and spend 250 bucks on a gig of super sweet stuff and buy a 6800GT and some other good stuff...
Now compare that rigs gaming benchmarks to:
someone spends 150-200 on a gig of decent...hell even value RAM and gets a 6800Ultra with the extra cash, who's gonna have the better gaming benchmarks? the ultra is...
So my point, if you play games price out the cheapest RAM you can get for your FSB speed, then max out the video card and then if you have cash left over, look for better ram. that links shows 1-2fps increase from CAS 2 to 3? I don't know about you but that's pretty **** poor for 50 bucks if your not running a top of the line video card.

And as far as "feel" and "seems" faster, that's worthless, people are TERRIBLE at judging things...placebo effects, confirmation biases...I mean there's tons of different psychological terms to describe those, you have to stick with numbers to be reliable.

Click to expand...

if you just play games that may be an ok aproach.
and if you missed it ive been pointing him at cheap ram but highley ocable ram.cheap has its place but it isnt in ocing most times.but sometimes you can get both.

i do take a little offence to you saying my observation is worthless when i said that

i do see a slight differance in windows speed alone.alot more is seen when benchmarking.

Click to expand...

i dont generally make referances like this unless i felt i was correct in saying so.but ill add this was only my "OPNION" the differances i saw were during boot up. everything else was only seen in benchmarks.

ive owned the type of ram he was refering to buying and i was making an observation of what i percieved happening when i bought better ram.
i bought and owned both so im intitled to my opinion.''

this was the original posters questions

any thoughts on this? and am i going astray, and being totaly wrong in my desision?

Click to expand...

i gave him my opinions.

if need be ill do the testing to show my oinions are well founded for me to make.ive been doing this long enough to notice these differances.and i dont care about what it should or shouldnt do.i care about what it did or didnt do.

If you are fsb limited by your mobo, the tighter timings will improve memory bandwidth. Now I fold QMDs from the FAH Stanford Project and those care only about your memory throughput. Since I just found out I can't go past DDR440/PC3500 speeds, I'll need tigher timings to improve things as I have no more speed left. I'm running 2.5-3-3-8-1t @220MHzfsb 1:1. If I was at 2-2-2-5-1t those QMDs would fold even faster since less clock cycles would be needed to move the same amount of data.

For gaming it's all about the graphics card mostly. System memory doesn't play as big a part. However I've found that if I set the AGP system memory apature to the maximum of 256MB (on my system) my 6600GT plays even the 6800 version of Nalu very smoothly. Any less of an apature like 128 or 64 and it gets choppy. Same goes for game play on my Xeon duallie rig. Doom3 sets a 512MB apature if I turn every thing to the max eye candy settings. It plays very smoothly.

Same here. Fold times on QMDs fell dramatically when the voltage was raised and timing tightened. World of difference at 250 2,2,2,6 1:1. At least for folding. Roughly 100 points a day from the prior settings and at 70mhz lower.

My feeling on RAM is this - "I worship the stuff". I don't think there is anything more important in any system than good RAM, and it never seems like it's enough. You could give me 10gigazillion MHz and I would want 20. Until timings are in the negative numbers i don't think it will ever be fast enough.

Am I addicted?

Silver said:

Same here. Fold times on QMDs fell dramatically when the voltage was raised and timing tightened. World of difference at 250 2,2,2,6 1:1. At least for folding. Roughly 100 points a day from the prior settings and at 70mhz lower.

Click to expand...

Yeah I picked up >50PPD just going from 200-->220 with the same timings and 200MHz lower CPU core speed. Once I get the timings as tight as possible, I'll raise the CPU multiplier.

3DFlyer said:

My feeling on RAM is this - "I worship the stuff". I don't think there is anything more important in any system than good RAM, and it never seems like it's enough. You could give me 10gigazillion MHz and I would want 20. Until timings are in the negative numbers i don't think it will ever be fast enough.

Am I addicted?

Click to expand...

No you're just being silly. RAM is but one critical system component. Equally importaint are: mobo, cpu, ps. This is the foundation the rest of the components depend on.

BTW to the forums