What kind of memory is appropriate for Phenom II

[Vahniti]

My situation:

I just purchased a AMD Phenom II X4 810 @2.6GHz (OC'd: 3.09GHz) and am currently running with 8gb of DDR2 RAM @ 667Mhz on a Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P Motherboard. My motherboard apparently does not support DDR3 despite the fact that it says 'AM3' on the box, Odd I know.

My question(s):

Would it be worth it to upgrade my memory speed to 1000Mhz, seeing as to how my processor is relatively high end ( I think )? Would it scale well with my build as stated above? What should I be shooting for as far as RAM is concerned?

note: the manufacturer of my motherboard boasts a maximum of 16Gb DDR2 at 1333Mhz+

 

[sub mesa]

No its not worth it at all. The speed difference between slowest DDR2 and fastest DDR3 does not exceed 10% in real applications. WinRAR shows a decent difference, but other tasks can be as low as 1% difference.

Memory speed is not important; memory quantity is. You have 8GB; keep it!

Spend your money on SSD instead or a new GPU if you're a gamer.

 

[buzznut]

I disagree somewhat. I think you would see a significant difference moving from ddr2 667 to ddr2 1066 speeds. I noticed a difference moving from 800 Mhz to 1066Mhz in my testing. I tested using several benchmarks, including sandra, AOD, pcpitstop, pcmark, and 3dmark06. Unfortunately that was some time ago, and I don't have numbers to share. But I believe it was in the 5-10% range increased performance.

And I'm not sure what performance gains there are moving from 4GB of ram to 8GB. You would have to have an application that would use more than 4 gigs of ram. There's just not that many apps that do that.

Is it worth it? That's up to you, 4 gigs of ram is running ~80-100 US. I recommend OCZ, reapers in particular if you can fit them with your cooling setup. 5-5-5-15 for 1066 Mhz ram.

 

[buzznut]

BTW, your mobo prolly says am2+, am3. If you want to use ddr3 memory, it has to be a strictly AM3 board. (with some exceptions from Jetway which can run both, although I have no confidence in that brand)

 

[Vahniti]

...Is it worth it? That's up to you, 4 gigs of ram is running ~80-100 US. I recommend OCZ, reapers in particular if you can fit them with your cooling setup. 5-5-5-15 for 1066 Mhz ram.

Yeah Ive heard that OCZ is great for overclocking as well. My computer is mostly a gaming/photoshop machine, taking that into consideration; if you were in my position, would you invest in a video card upgrade over new RAM? ( My current video card is a PNY GeForce 9800GT 512mhz )

 

[saint19]

The difference between DDR2 800 and DDR2 1066 isn't more that 2 or 3 seconds. Few moths ago, I had 4GB 1066 Crucial Ballistix Tracer and now I have 4GB 800 from the same manufacturere, and the performace is the same. The win 7 WEI give to me the same score with 1066 and 800.