quick question on DDR2

[novak]

Hey I was just wondering awhile from now I'll probably upgrade some of my PC parts. Right now I have a Asus P5GDC motherboard with 4 DDR slots and 2 DDR2 slots. I have my 4 DDR slots filled with 512 sticks and was wondering about DDR2

Does it really provide a performance boost that I will beable to see switching over to 2x1GB sticks of DDR2 or should I just stick with my DDR 512 sticks? Thanks

 

[darkstar782]

The performance boost would be negligible to be honest. If you had no RAM now I'd say buy DDR2, but there is little point in replacing all your RAM. The max bandwidth of DDR-400 in dual channel is equal to the FSB bandwidth of 800MHz FSB Intel CPUs anyway, and DDR commonly has better latencies than DDR2

However, it is usefull in that you could get DDR2 now, giving you one less thing to worry about later

 

[novak]

How is DDR2 for overclocking. Is it more reliable then DDR for overclocking or are they about the same comes more to what brand you get. right now I tried overclocking my Intel 3.0 but my ram wont let me, it's generic and samsung and is to bad to be overclocked.

Any prefrences to try and overclock, should I go get some good Cosair DDR or is DDR2 more reliable? Thanks

 

[darkstar782]

If you are planning to overclock, I would probably go for DDR2. Its not like it will be wasted, as you will almost definately want to use DDR2 in your next system anyway.

You can get DDR2 rated at 667 or 800MHz pretty cheap, and much as the extra bandwidth would be kinda pointless when your CPU only has 6.4GB/s bandwidth at stock, DDR is not only a dead end upgrade path (no use in your next build), its more expensive these days and anything over 400MHz RAM is waaay overpriced.

With DDR2-667 for example, which should be relatively cheap, especially compared to DDR1-500 or similar, you have 10.6GB/s of bandwith in Dual Channel mode, enough to saturate your CPUs FSB all the way up to 1333MHz, and I doubt you are going to achieve the 5GHz CPU speed which would result from that FSB speed

Add to that, the latencies tend to be more flexible in DDR2. For example, my DDR2-667 3-3-3-8-12 ram runs fine at DDR2-800 4-4-4-12-15 speeds