Potentially stupid RAM question.

SupaT · Joined: Jun 06, 2008 Posts: 1

Firstly, hello all! I hope you can help.

I'm about to embark on my first "home-built" Pc, as it's time to upgrade from my current rig.

I've been researching various components and have settled on, what I hope, will give a decent performance for the budget.

I have chosen everything except the motherboard and RAM, which is where I'm hoping you will be able to advise.

I'm going to be running the 64-bit version of XP, as I'm no fan of Vista, and as I understand it, no matter how much RAM I have, only 3Gb (or is it 3.2?) of RAM will only be used/seen. As RAM is pretty cheap at the moment that's no problem, and you never know I might move on to Vista in the future, but, is it worth spending more now and getting the more pricey DDR3 RAM now (probably only 2Gb), with the intention being I won't need to upgrade again as soon, or should I just stick with cheaper DDR2 and get 4Gb?

That being said, can anyone advise on potentialy decent purchases.

I'm going to be getting a Core2 Duo E8400 S775 3.0GHz (1333MHz FSB) processor, and a GeForce 8800GTS 512MB PCIe GPU. Power will come from a TruePower Trio 650W.

I use my rig mainly for gaming, little bt of websurfing and the occasional video conversion.

I've never overclocked anything in my life, but having read into it a little am tempted to get things that will allow me to have a play, if I want to, but will still offer good performance if I don't.

Hope that wasn't too rambling or irrelevant, and any and all advise gratefully received.

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2378

edited. I just noticed it is 64 it XP and not Vista so I don't know if my information is correct. I'll do some searching.

TeeDee · Last edited by TeeDee on Tue Jun 10, 2008 12:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 995 Location: Central FL, USA

I thought I had responded to this thread once.....but I can't find my post.
LG bit me in the breeches again!

I won't get into that argument as to what ram is best.
For the motherboard you choose, there is ONE type and speed of ram that is best. Get that and you won't be sorry.

Knowing what I want it to do, I'd be buying the mobo first, CPU and ram second and hard drive third. Video later, or at least lower on my list of priorities. PSU last, based on how much power you're going to need to run the other hardware you choose. With any new PC today, I'd start around the 680w range and go right UP from there.

A fast SATA2 hard drive is a must! A second one for backups is a good idea too. Then if using XP, there are a whole list of registry tweaks that can improve performance drastically. Like getting the Windows Kernal to load into RAM on bootup. That alone, gives a PC a huge performance boost.

Overclocking can only lead to greater power usage and greater HEAT generation, that you'll have to get rid of. Just let your CPU run at the speed it was designed for, and you'll have a much happier computer.
If you need more speed, then buy a faster processor!

Well, that's my 2 cents worth, for a sunny Tuesday morning. Wink

Cheers mates!
The Doctor Cool

TeeDee

I managed to borrow 2Gig of new DDR3 1333 MHz and did an overnight burn-in with Memtest, leaving the default latencies of 10-10-10-29 unchanged.

The best test I could think of was a PAL-to-NTSC conversion, which takes 51 minutes with my 800MHz DDR2 setup, working with a 4.36 Gig DVD5 fileset: with the DDR3 installed, the same conversion took just over 40 minutes. I think it's reasonable to assume that a smidgeon more could be shaved off that time by setting the latencies to the manufacturer's guaranteed timings (in this case 9-9-9-24), which - in complete agreement with Doc - is as close as I'm ever prepared to go towards overclocking.

The next step now is to get my paws on another matched RAM pair identical to my own 800MHz and run the same test with 4 Gig of RAM... I'll post the results when I get it done, in the hope that it might be of help.

I can't agree too strongly with the advice that Doc gave you: overclocking is NOT conducive to long-term stability and WILL significantly shorten the life of your setup, quite apart from your getting a fatter utility bill land on your mat... (The ambient temperature here is currently 70 degrees fahrenheit - my BIOS is reporting a northbridge temperature of 35 degrees centigrade and a processor temperature of 34..)

I should emphasise that my results are, of course, specific to my own system and can only give a rough idea at best, as there is an enormous number of variables involved; nevertheless, as Doc advised, choose your system components with care and you can end up with a setup that's both fast AND stable.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 995 Location: Central FL, USA

I don't build computers for a living anymore, so I'm not into all this latency BS and video card mumbojumbo.

I took my check book and went to Smart Guys Computers in Longwood, FL., over a year ago to buy the parts for this computer.
I told them approximately what I wanted and how much money I had to spend and they put a real Kickbutt system together for me.
Actually it wasn't together....it was a stack of boxes. Wink

The put-together happened after I got all the parts back to the house.

I won't go into all the gory details, but I wound up with an MSI K9N Platinum mobo and an AMD Dual Core 3800+ CPU chip and 2 gigs of DDR2 ram, plus two Maxtor SATA2 hard drive and two DVD burners.

My PC guru was here to help me get the OS installed and after we got it running, his comment was "this thing SCREAMS!".
Coming from him, a long time PC builder, that was sky high praise.

But NO computer runs worth a crap, right out of the box, because of Windows. The hardware is capable of so much more than windows will generally allow. I have to tweak and tune the heck out of it, to get the performance I want.

At this moment I'm running Vista Ultimate 32 on my #2 SATA2 hard drive.
I've spent most of the day, downloading and installing updated hardware drivers. With a few tweaks and twiddles, I've got it running pretty well.

It's a never ending battle to keep everything up to date and running smoothly.

I thought this computer ran pretty good with just one gig of ram installed, and it did, but it was a real eye opener the day I finally installed the second gig. So my advise to anyone building their own computer is to get at least 2 gigs of ram......whatever ram matches the mobo the best.

And don't forget the SATA2 hard drives. They run a g'zillion times faster than the IDE drives.

Cheers mates,
The Doctor Cool

goretsky

Hello,

One thing to keep in mind is that while you are likely to get better gaming performance from the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows XP Professional then Windows Vista, device driver support is going to be better for Vista. The same also applies to software support; developers are going to look at supporting what the majority of their customer base uses, and I suspect that for more general purpose applications, that is the 32-bit versions of Windows XP with SP2 and SP3 and 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. While the 64-bit version of Windows XP is popular in academic computing and other places where having a 64-bit desktop operating system makes sense, there may be situations where it is the first version of XP that gets dropped for support by a software developer. If you have specific hardware or software that you plan on using with your new computer, or intend to purchase for use with it, check with the developer or manufacturer to see what their plans are for supporting the 64-bit version of Windows XP.

It seems you are using current hardware, so 64-bit Windows Vista device drivers should be widely available, stable and perform well. However, Windows Vista is a newer, larger operating system than XP and things like games are likely to perform a little more slowly on that. Whether that is noticeable during gameplay and affects you, though, is something you will need to determine.

What you might want to consider doing is going with the 64-bit version of Windows XP for now, and then plan on migrating to Windows Vista at some point, such as a year from now. That should give you some time to prepare, especially if you have already purchased the 64-bit version of Windows XP and want to get some use out of that investment.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky