Good DDR2 RAM

Post by **Kills On Site** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 3:41 am

Well I am hoping to upgrade my living room computer soon and am hoping to go with a Pentium D and an ABit AW8 mobo. Before anyone says go with AMD, this is the computer that does all the encoding, storage, burning and other things that would really benefit from dual core and higher clock speeds. According to ABit's site the AW8 takes DDR2-800/667/533 Un-buffered Non-ECC. Now I didn't keep up with the DDR2 memory and am lost as to what is good RAM in DDR2. I know that DDR2 has higher latencies, but what is a good latency for it, who makes good performing RAM for DDR2, and anything good on newegg?
Thanks.

Post by **YourGrandpa** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 4:46 am

Corsair makes awesome RAM.

Post by **SOAPboy** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:28 am

YourGrandpa wrote:Corsair makes awesome RAM.

Nice safe answer..

Truth tho..
Doubt ill ever buy Corsair, but yeah, its good ram..

Post by **Kills On Site** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:42 am

TBH I do perfer Kingston, I've had some Corsair XMS not like to run at its intended latencies. That beside, I still need to know what I need to do to run a Intel Pentium D 930 Presler, stated 800 MHz FSB and an ABit AW8 mobo. I don't know exactly what RAM will work, and what will give me the best performance for the lowest price. I would like a 1GB stick, upgrade with another 1GB stick later.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:46 am

kingston = Good compatability, Bad performance.

i will never buy kingston again, watching a identical computer ( litterly ) With Genaric Samsung ram with the same timmings beat my computer out is somthing that i will take to me the next time i pick out some ram.

ya know?

Post by **DiscoDave** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 11:17 am

Corsair, Crucial and Samsung get my vote.

I've also heard good things from OCZ and Mushkin

Post by **Kills On Site** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:47 pm

Well Crucial does seem to have some good amounts of RAM on newegg, but I am still confused as to what speed and latency I need for the processor and mobo in question.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 6:19 pm

the timmings, the lower the beter. simple as that..

pic a stick.

Post by **Grudge** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 6:42 pm

We're talking about a 2-3% difference in performance here, at the most. I'd say price is the deciding factor in this case.

Post by **Kills On Site** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 7:39 pm

Well I have never purchased crucal before, but they seem to make good products so I am thinking of going with Crucial Ballistix 1GB DDR2 557 (PC25300). I would only be getting 1 stick to begin with and then upgrade with another later. What do you guys think?

Post by **raw** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 7:53 pm

http://www.crucial.com The reason being, Crucial is Micron and Micron has been one of the industry leaders in memory chip manufacturing for the longest time. Everyone uses Micron, including IBM for their eServers.

Post by **Tormentius** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 8:34 pm

raw wrote:www.crucial.com The reason being, Crucial is Micron and Micron has been one of the industry leaders in memory chip manufacturing for the longest time. Everyone uses Micron, including IBM for their eServers.

Their Ballistix line is even more impressive.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:51 pm

i would agree with that choice, and i will come over to steal it soon enough.

Post by **Foo** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:54 pm

Kills On Site wrote:Well I have never purchased crucal before, but they seem to make good products so I am thinking of going with Crucial Ballistix 1GB DDR2 557 (PC25300). I would only be getting 1 stick to begin with and then upgrade with another later. What do you guys think?

If you have 4 ram slots I suggest buying a pair of 512 sticks to run together then buying a subsequent pair at a later date.

You'll see immediate dual channel benefit and down the line will gain the same dual channel benefit with another pair.

If you buy a single 1Gb stick you wont get dual channel benefit, and there's no guarantee that when you buy a second stick it will work in dual-channel with your current one.

I think I'm right in this. Can someone confirm?

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:59 pm

truthfully, i would agree with Foo...

2X 512's would edge out a single 1gig stick easly.

and you can easly upgrade two 2 gig's in the future with that memory.

Post by **Kills On Site** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:23 pm

That thought had crossed my mind, but I feel that buying a single 1GB stick will do me well until I can get another 1GB stick, that way I will soon enough have 2GB dual-channel and have 2 DIMM slots left over.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:38 pm

allright man, if thats what you want to do, Give er..

make sure you make a note of the model Ram you are getting.. and try and buy it within a year.

Post by **Kills On Site** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:46 pm

Well another question, is Pentium D a good choice. I noticed it is not HT, but since it is dual core you do get true multitasking. I went with the Presler core because it has 2MB of L2 cache per core. What do you guys think?

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 11:09 pm

we'll, i just finished reading the reviews from tomshardware and anandtech about the D 900 series, and it is a good CPU, but it still lagg's a little behind the AMD 64.

OTher then that, i dont think that it looses anything due to the Lack of multithreading.

Post by **shadd_** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 11:12 pm

HT is more or less an emulator of two cores. so having two actual cores makes HT obsolete.

is that right or am i off?

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 11:19 pm

no, you are right.

Post by **SOAPboy** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:52 am

DiscoDave wrote:Corsair, Crucial and Samsung get my vote.

I've also heard good things from OCZ and Mushkin

After my last OCZ encounter, ill use nothing but mushkin until i die or they go out of buisness..