Which RAM should I buy (DDR400 2x512MB)?

[asdfghjkl]

I am from Vienna (Austria), so maybe my English isnt perfect.


My new Motherboard (Asus A7V880 w/ Barton 3200+ (200MHz), VIA KT880, Socket A) doesnt really work good w/ my old Infineon 3rd DIMMs, So I need new memory.

I can only pay max. 90€ (about 110$), better would be <85€ (about 100$).

I thought about this Modules (all links in German):

MDT DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5 (PC400), €40,90 per DIMM
Samsung DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL3 (PC400), €40,98 per DIMM
Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL3-3-3 (PC400) (KVR400X64C3A/512), €41,60 per DIMM
Corsair DIMM ValueSelect Kit 1024MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5-3-3-8-2T (PC400) (VS1GBKIT400), €83,70 (for 2 DIMMs)
GeIL DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5 Value Series (PC400) , €43,90 per DIMM
G.Skill DIMM Kit 1024MB PC3200 DDR (PC400) (F1-3200PHU2-1GBNT) (2,5-4-4-8), €84,- for 2 DIMMs
Extrememory DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5-4-4-8 (PC400) (512-DD1N-400D25-C1), €36 per DIMM

80€ are about 95$, 72€ are about 85$.

The prices are from the cheapest offline-shops in Vienna (Austria).

Kingston and GeIL have livelong warranty, Corsair 10 Years, G.Skill, MDT and Samsung 3 Years and Extremmemmory 2 Years. Corsair and Kingston are on teh supported vendor list for my Mobo, but this is not so important, because I can RMA the memory if it doesnt work w/ my Mobo. I dont really know if 3 Years warranty will be enough for me, so i would preferr longer warrantys. but it doesnt matter so much than Extremmemory has only 2 Years, because they are much cheaper than the rest.

GeIL also has l life long warranty, but they also cost >85€ (2x€43,90=€87,80), so I would only take them, if the performance really makes a noticeable difference in games (not only in benchmarks)...

Also I would only take the G.Skill, if there is a noticeable difference in games, because they dont have them in any shop now and I would have to wait, until they arrive.

If there isnt a lot of difference betwenn Extremmemory and the other modules in Games I would take the extremmemory, because of the price.

You can also suggest me modules, that I havent posted.

I will also overclock and use lower timings than officially supported, if it runs stable (but my Motherboard only supports max. 227MHz and my Barton is locked, so I cannot go very high w/ the FSB).

About the Corsair: I couldnt find out, if they support 1T or 2T command rate (in some shops it says 2T, in others 1T). Do you think, tehy support 1T, or only 2T in Dual Channel mode? And what about the other modules? I havent found anything about their command rate.

GeIL and the G.Skill only support 2,5-4-4-8 (the others support 2,5-3-3-8 or 3-3-3-8, I was not able to find out what timings the extremmemory support, except that they are CL2,5). I also noticed, that tRCD (the second timing) makes much a bigger difference than CAS (the first) at least on my old Epox 8rda+ nForce2 Mobo (i wasent able to test it on my new Mobo, because I first have to get directx to work). the difference was about 100-150 popints in 3DMark01SE betweeen tRCD 2 and 3, but only about 40 Points betweeen CAS 2 and 3.

Do you think, that GeIL and G.Skill will also run stable@2,5-3-3-8?

Do you think, that because of the worse rating the timings will also be worse than w/ the other DIMMs?


The Extremmemmory DIMMS only cost 36€ for this week, next week they will cost 59€ in this shop and the cheapest I can get them for in other shops is €43,50.

So it would be good, if you answer before Saturday (I am in Austria, and in Austria all shops are closed on Sunday).

 

[asdfghjkl]

I was in the shop today, where they have the cheap Extremmemory DIMMs, but they dont have any in store anyore. So I ordered them. I will get them on Thursday, but for the old price.

If you mean, that the other memory modules are noticeable faster in games (because of better timings or higher overclockability), I can still cancel the order.

 

[Michael Warren]

You wont notice a difference in gaming or anything else because your computer can already access the ram very very fast even with the lowest speeds. The main reason why people tend to go with better/faster ram is for benchmarking and you can push your processor clock higher without playing around with a divider.