Help on Memory Selection Please

[mrfederalist]

I have most of my hardware spec'd out.

MB - EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

CPU - AMD 3800+ Venice

GPU - eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Desktop PC - Retail

Case - COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

PS - Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply - Retail

HDD1 - Old IDE Drive from DELL for 'C:'
HDD2 - Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JD 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

I'm not sure what type of memory to put in. 8O

I'll use it for games, some photo processing (Ebay pic, nothing fancy), burn CDs, music, WORD, etc. I picked the MB, CPU and PS for OCing potential, though I may not if if runs ok.

I have these two memory modules so far.

CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model VS1GBKIT400 - Retail

-or-

OCZ EL Platinum Revision 2 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024ELDCPER2-K - Retail

I'll have XP pro on it.

What do you folks think?

 

[TurdBurglar]

If you have the money, I would buy 2GB from the start. 2GB isn't real useful right now in gaming, but, as always, in the future, more RAM is better. You will likely be able to take advantage of the extra ram in Photoshop and other graphics applications though. OCZ and Corsair are both reputable memory manufacturers. It always comes down to price/performance for me. It looks like the OCZ you listed has more aggressive timings but it is nearly $100 more. The OCZ will be better for overclocking as well. If you had that much to spend on the 1GB kit of OCZ I would just get this:

OCZ 2GB Dual Channel Platinum Kit

-my 2 cents

 

[mrfederalist]

Trying to get a grip on what the timings really mean. I understand lower numbers is faster memory.

How much of a difference is a 2-2-2-5 vs 2-3-3-6 going to be apparent to me sitting in front of the machine?

What does the voltage have to do with it?

Thanks

 

[TurdBurglar]

There will be no noticeable difference. The first number, which is CAS latency, is the most important of the 4. You can read more about memory timings by googling it. There are some well-written articles on the subject out there. Voltage comes into play when you start overclocking RAM to higher speeds like from 400Mhz to 415Mhz. To run at faster speeds the RAM requires more voltage in many cases.