2Gig of Slow or 1Gig of Fast

[hairyhaggis]

hmmm, I am pondering over my new system, I am planning on purchasing a Pentium D 805, yes to over clock it, with the Asus P5wD2 mobo.

The mobo supports upto 8Gig of DDR2 ram at the following speeds 533/677 and 800. My question is would I be bettwe purchasing 1Gig of DDR2 800Mhz or 2Gig of DDR 677Mhz,, price wise they are about the same, but would the speed gains of the 800Mhz ram componsate for the lower capacity?

Thanks in advance

 

[Synergy6]

Really depends what you're going to be using it for. I would guess something like 3DMark05 would score higher with the faster RAM, as would most current games. However, the trend in the newest games (Oblivion, BF2, GRAW etc) and presumably future ones, is for higher quality texture settings to use more than 1GB RAM. If you're using more RAM than you have, just about any speed is going to be faster than using the hard drive paging file. Also, presumably you'll be keeping this system for more than 18months, by which time Vista *may* have hit. Cue a RAM hungry OS and super RAM hungry games.

I use 2GB DDR400, and I like the way I don't need a paging file, even when running the latest games at their highest texture settings. But, I'm sure there are other scenarios when the extra speed of DDR800 might be useful.

Ronaldo38741

 

[hairyhaggis]

I might add that the system will be used for video editing, programming and hosting local websites, using sql server and IIS.
The system will not be getting used for games.

 

[1Tanker]

I might add that the system will be used for video editing, programming and hosting local websites, using sql server and IIS.
The system will not be getting used for games.

In this case, i would
definetely get the 2GB. I don't know what HD you have, but you'll want a
fast one. GL

 

[Scougs]

I think, since the Pentium D 805 has a 533MHz bus you wouldn't be able to take advantage of the DDR2-800 so I would lean toward the 2GB of DDR2-667.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

since the 805 will be overclocked maybe getting the DDR2-800 would be good. Set the ratios to run at 667MHz so that when overclocked, the memory won't be overclocked.
Edit: I realized that even DDR2-667 would probably do this too since the bus is (as stated) 533MHz... oops
That in mind, when playing Oblivion, I've hit over 80% memory utilization with 2GB... For the most part I'd tend towards more RAM rather than faster ram... but I've never worked with a dual core pentium architecture and I have a dual core AMD with its very efficient memory controller.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though I don't have any experience with this kind of a situation, I'd still recommend 2GB over 1GB for modern and future gaming. Another possibility is to get 1GB of 800MHz and then later add another GB after saving up more $. That way you can have both memory speed and quantity... just not right away.

-mcg