DDR2 vs. DDR?

You'll get more benefit from the bandwith of DDR2. Anyways getting the DDR would require a motherboard change.

I thought that by going with the DDR I'd be able to go dual-channel and increase my bandwidth that way. Also the timings on the DDR are better even though it is a little slower. My board definently supports both DDR and DDR2 so what do ya think?

All right so I got my hands on the DDR and installed it. Here's the results, but to be fair the DDR2 is a 1GB stick while the DDR is ran dual-channel.
DDR2 vs. DDR
mem read=3971 MB/s / mem read=5601 MB/s
mem write=1620 MB/s / mem write=1906 MB/s
mem latency=100.9 ns / mem latency=98.6 ns
bandwidth=4267 MB/s / bandwidth=6400 MB/s

3DMark 05=5705 / 3DMark05=5724

Not a big upgrade, but in this scenario(being free) it did give a boost. My sytem has always been very responsive so it's difficult to tell. I haven't had time to try any intense gaming to see if my fps are any higher. When I go 2GB I will probably shell out the extra dough for the DDR2.

Of course you're completely wrong, HERE'S A REVIEW showing DDR2-533 beating CAS 2-2-2 DDR400!

But AMD has planned already about going DDR2. So that means DDR2 are better otherwise AMD will stick to with DDR.

As you can see from my earlier post, the lower latency DDR 400 ran in dual-channel out performed my single DDR2 533 in every aspect on Intel P4(specs in first post). Obviously, if you spent $300 on performance DDR2 667 with latencies of 3 or better, I would hope it would win. However, in my scenario whatever speed advantage the DDR2 533 had was completely overshadowed by the lower latencies and increased bandwidth of the DDR in dual-channel. Last night I played a bunch of games to test out the new RAM. With the DDR2 when I played F.E.A.R. with the settings maxed I would occasionally get a slight lag when entering a new room with lots of action. I played a number a levels with the DDR 400 last night and tried to make it lag, but I couldn't. Also when I would exit the game with the DDR2 my system would be slow for about 30 seconds, that is also gone with the DDR! All other games (BF2, COD2, Farcry, Doom 3) played pretty much the same. I'm not saying DDR2 sucks(I still have a stick in reserve), but I don't think that there is much advantage(if any) with DDR2 533. When I upgrade to 2GB I will probably go with DDR2 667 and try to overclock the latencies.

I wasn't aware you could interchange the 2 memories, but even if you can you should stick with ddr2.

Oops. Nevermind. I didn't scroll down to see the other replies.

That must account for why I got less than a 2% decrease in latency time. It is interesting thou that I such large gains in other areas. 29% in memory read, 15% in memory write, and 33% in bandwidth! Maybe my DDR2 stick just sucks? There is no doubt I am seeing a performance increase when playing F.E.A.R. When I upgrade my board I'll probably have to go with DDR2 but having the option of both makes for a nice way to test different RAM in the exact same setup. I think it proves that the increase in speed from 400Mhz to 533 isn't enough to overcome the increased bandwidth due to running DDR in dual-channel.

1GB stick. If the DDR wasn't free I would have never even thought to try the switch. Glad I did.