CONROE/DDR2 RAM guide needed as a sticky

[hcforde]

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what ram to get with what conroe and why. Many people jumped from Intel to AMD and are jumping back again, I am one of them. In that time period we were first using SDRAM, I was using Intel Chips then- there was a movement to AMD then ddr cam into existance now everything has changed and we are in DDR2 land and seemingly a movement back to Intel. During this time period I missed a whole generation of Intel boards with DDR ram and now have to deal with all the new things about DDR2 and the Conroe chip. I do not feel I am alone and believe that all of the questions about this are coming from people like me. Not so much loyal to a company but to the price performance of the offerings. Right now that has been shifted into the Intel arena. A comprehensive guide to answer basic questions would help. Anyone up to the task?

Questions that I see that should be addressed are below, Please feel free to add to the list as a guide to the person/persons that wish to take on that task

1. Which CPU should I buy - How much speed do you need for what task
Gaming, home, business apps, scientific, financial

2. What speed memory is best (price/performance)for each CPU. Do I waste money putting PC2-8000 memory in an E6300

3. Would a x6800 suffer with a PC2-4200 memory sticks?

4. What to look for when attempting to overclock
In general is 4-4-4-12 in DDR533 better than 5-4-5-15 in DDR1000? why

A primer would assist a lot of people.

Thanks

 

[Miles72]

I would get a reponse suitable to this situation when i asked my mom for a sandwich

me: Mommy can I have a sammich?

Mommy: GET IT YOURSELF!! :lol:


I know nothing of RAM though so count me out

 

[nukemaster]

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=472
there is some good info here....it was sugested to me by JumpingJack....

in many real world apps there is less than a 5% difference...

 

[mickeddie]

From madshrimps
<quote>The Core 2 has a front side bus (FSB) speed of 266Mhz x 4 (Quadruple) “1066Mhz”, the ram is running at 266Mhz x2 (Dual Channel) x2 (DDR) = “1066Mhz”, so with PC4200 memory and FSB are running synchronized. When you use PC5300 you are no longer running synchronous with the FSB and a memory divider of x1.25 (5/4) has to be used. The older Athlon XP from AMD also displayed this decrease in performance when running memory asynchronous due to its short pipeline, where memory latency is more important then memory bandwidth. With the Pentium 4 the pipeline was longer and the effect of running asynchronous which increased latency was masked. Core 2 technology marked Intel's return to a shorter pipeline and thus is more similar to the Athlon XP than the Pentium 4.<quote>

So if you overclock your Core 2 aren't you changing the FSB? I know nothing about OCing so don't think "what the hell is he talking about" if I am completely wrong. Anyway, if OCin't changes the FSB then is the PC 4200 still the better choice?

And from the first page of the article it compares prices...there is only at most a $50 difference...So for this I am thinking of going with the PC6400.

How decent is Gskill and Patriot? How do they overclock?