Confused about Memory Speed and Memory Amount

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iamhephzibah

iamhephzibah

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Oct 16, 2011
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I'm gonna say I have some knowledge about computers. Some areas I get lost in such as Memory. Here is what I have going on...

My system is running 10Gb of ram at speed of 677mhz. (Part of those 10GB is two sticks of Corsair vengeance LP 4gb) I bought this system as a HP and been slowly improving it as the money came in. The last thing I upgraded was the CPU. It went from a Athlon II x 4 to a FX-8350, that changed everything. But now the piggy bank has alerted me that I can upgrade yet another item on the System. First question is SSD or RAM? I say SSD as I have a Seagate Baracuda 7200rpm Hybrid drive with a 5400rpm 1tb that was stock when I first bought this guy in the system.

I looked and found that the Kingston 120gb SSD would be a great match for my system. Having said that I also feel like I could benefit from Ram as well. I looked and found a Corsair Vengeance 8gb Kit on Amazon for roughly the same amount as the SSD.

So should my course of action be... Less ram with faster speeds? (and how do I really benefit from that?) or faster loading times for the OS (Given 8.1 on the Seagate loads wicked fast!) and maybe other small programs.

My system is...

Gigabyte 970A-D3
AMD FX-8350
XFX 7870 Double D Ghz edition
660 Thermaltake PSU
Seagate 700gb Hybrid HDD
1TB Hitachi HDD
Evo 212+
 
Solution
J4ynik
How did you get 10 GB od RAM?! And you are still running on 677 Mhz? Well, since 677 Mhz is REALLY low, you should probably update the RAM first. Because that is the slowest part in your system. It's REALLY blocking your power. And a Seagate Baracuda with 7200 Rpm is absolutely enough speed!
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J4ynik

J4ynik

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Oct 5, 2013
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How did you get 10 GB od RAM?! And you are still running on 677 Mhz? Well, since 677 Mhz is REALLY low, you should probably update the RAM first. Because that is the slowest part in your system. It's REALLY blocking your power. And a Seagate Baracuda with 7200 Rpm is absolutely enough speed!
 
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Solution
iamhephzibah

iamhephzibah

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Oct 16, 2011
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So the system came with 6gb of ram when I got it back in 2011. it was an HP Pavilion but the ram is the last thing remaining of that old gal. A year later (which I think was about a year ago) I installed the Corsair's 4gb taking it to 10gb total. I had always kept it in the back of my head the 677 speed was rather slow but I didn't know to what extent.

How will the system be affected if at all when it receives a drop of 2bg with faster speeds. Will I even see a difference?

Thanks a bunch for the answer, I was having a hard time making that decision.
 
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GavinLeigh

GavinLeigh

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Jun 30, 2006
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Leave the ram, I'm guessing you have 2x4Gb + 2x1Gb. Get an SSD, Samsung EVO 120Gb or similar. Great improvement. There's no way you'll need over 10Gb of ram, in fact 8Gb should be fine. If the 1Gb sticks are rated slower... then take them out.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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Jun 5, 2013
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the 667 is true freq, so you have 1333 DRAM as this is DDR (DOUBLE data rate), which is fine for your rig, so I agree with you, I'd look into an SSD for the OS and apps - if possible a 128GB one in SATA III - that way when you go to a new system can take it with you
 
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iamhephzibah

iamhephzibah

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First two DIMMs are Corsair Vengeance 2gb Each. The other 2 DIMMs are 2gb and 4gb. I don't feel the system lags with performing in games or having lots of Chrome windows open, I do feel it lags at start up, and I don't have too many items (Less than 5 or so) items start with windows.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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Jun 5, 2013
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Amd (don't think anyway) hasn't actually implemented Intel's flex mode, but do a similar thing, on many of their newer mobo you'll see something like the below in the manual:

"You may install varying memory sized in Channel A and Channel B. The system maps the total size of the lower-sized channel for dual-channel configuration. Any excess memory from the higher-sized channel is then mapped for single-channel operation"

I 'think' they have a name for it, but can't think of it off hand
 
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