512Mb Fast ram OR 1GB slower RAM?

I'm trying to decide what to do about buying ram:

a) Buy nice pc3700 (ex: OCZ Gold pc3700 rev3) or pc4000 (ex: OCZ pc4000 Gold rev.2) ram at 256x2 (512Mb)

OR

b) Buy normal (ex: Corsair Value Select) pc3200 ram at 512x2...

I'm gonna get the 3000+ venice most likely with 939 pci-e mb (don't know yet which). I would like to overclock to 220 'fsb' and maybe higher....Buying the higher speed ram would allow me to run 1:1, but with only 512Mb. Buying the pc3200 ram would mean i have 1Gb of ram, but i would either need to run async with the cpu or not overclock the cpu in the first place.

Which would give me the best performance? And would any of them give me a noticeable performance boost over the others? by the way, anything less then 5% difference (or even 10% maybe) is useless to me - i'm not out to get great benchmarks or something - just to maybe get maybe faster speed in windows, load up times, and maybe games.....

Any suggestions?

You can get a gig and hit a 220 fsb no problem with PC3200 stuff. You could probably get away with 240 even. Take a look at Mushkin Redline. It's *** cheap (for a gig) and it overclocks like a mother too. There's some rebates going around that sell the PC4000 stuff for like 1$ more than the PC3200. Check out the Memory section a little more.

1 gig of ram is the standard. I have 2gigs of ram, and while many would claim overkill, I think it necessary. If you plan on gaming/photoshop/any large file transfers, 1 gig will prove its worth. Play battlefield 2, that game eats ram!

If you play games get at least a gig. Especially if you play battlefield 2.

Actually, since 2 people have already brought it up: I don't even have Battlefield 2....

I know getting 1 Gb is preferred but, what about system performance between the above mentioned scenarios i posted above?

You will see a visible performance gap, with the 1GB slower RAM in the lead. Although the benchmarks may say otherwise, you can easily tell the difference. I say to go with the 1GB.

I agree with everyone above. It's very likely these days you'll use more than 512MB of RAM, and once you start paging to disk, the performance hit will be much worse than the difference between fast and slow RAM. Also, the A64's memory controller works so well that the faster RAM is unlikely to get you a 10% performance boost in real world aps. Check out this excellent thread comparing PC3000 value RAM to the good stuff.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

Oh, and btw, you don't need to run 1:1 with the A64. The RAM and CPU are always asynchronous, even at "1:1", so go ahead and use those dividers to keep the RAM stable and while maxing out your CPU.

overclocks like a mother too

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my mother dosent overclock (j/k)
but id get the 1gb

1 gig of value > any 512 for RL performance, get the gig.

Gig is the standard, gotta start from that. Plus memmory is dirt cheap now. A gig of Mushkin 3500 Redlines start at 145 $ (USD). Good overclockers too.

Another vote for a gig, and the Mushkin 3500 Redline for $145. I just got it yesterday and so far i'm at 235mhz 2-2-2-6 with 3.3vdimm.

I say get 2gigs (2x1024)

Audioaficionado said:

I say get 2gigs (2x1024)

Click to expand...

pffft only 2? try 2*2048