Is it worth upgrading to DDR3?

[thehoop]

Hello all,

my questions is a bit specialised and I thought this would be the best place to ask.

My setup is:
Q6600 at stock speed (possibly overclocking in the future)
TRUE BLACK cooler.
ASUS P5KC motherboard
Corsair NOVA 32GB SSD
Sapphire ATI 5850 Extreme
Samsung Syncmaster 2032BW monitor
Corsair CSM2X1024-8500C5D 4x1GB DDR2 modules

I considered selling those modules and upgrade to DDR3. The reason for that is because I can make £70-80 on this RAM on ebay let's say and then I could buy 4GBs of DDR3 that would cost me around £40

Or even better I could get DDR3 for the same amount give or take..Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB goes for £75 or so.

My main use would be games at 1680x1050. I don't use it for any other demanding applications..

Do you think I'd get a significant increase in performance? or in general is it worth going to DDR3 and/or 8GB?

Thanks all in advance!

 

[rolli59]

Just changing over to DDR3 is not going to give a noticeable performance boost neither will going up to 8GB from 4GB.
Would you not need a new motherboard as well? DDR3 does not fit DDR2 slots!

 

[thehoop]

The Asus P5KC can take both DDR2 and DDR3. It has 6 RAM slots, 4 for DDR2 and 2 for DDR3. So I could have 2x4GBs DDR3.

The other thing I was thinking is that this could be a good opportunity to make something more of my DDR2 chips cuz they could easily be sold for some DDR3. I'm just thinking that DDR3 could go up in price in the future and this could be a good opportunity now.

 

[rolli59]

In that case selling the DDR2 and getting the DDR3 is not a bad idea since they can be transferred into a new build if you decide to do a full upgrade later in not so distant future.

 

[thehoop]

I just noticed now that it doesn't support more than 4GBs of DDR3 so 8GBs plan is out of the window.. however I could go to 2x2GBs DDR3 at 1066Mhz. Would they perform better in games than 4x1GBs of DDR2 at 800 MHz?

That way I could put some money on the side as well for a future upgrade..?

It's one of those times when you're thinking should I just leave it alone perhaps? in the ASUS forums this mobo is notorious for being picky with RAM..

 

[jsc]

Leave the system alone. Assuming that you have the capability, installing DDR3 RAM will not give you any useful performance increase.

 

[rolli59]

^+1 save the money until you can do a full upgrade in light of your last post.

 

[thehoop]

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5KC/#specifications

Those are the specs.

I was thinking.. get 4gbs of DDR3 now that are cheap and perhaps get 4 more in the future..

That is provided I find out what make and model work perfectly with this board..

 

[stillerfan15]

Go to the Crucial website and download their memory/ motherboard eval and it should tell you exactly which ddr3 memory to order and they do back it if it doesn't work. I ran it to upgrade from a mismatched 1 and 2 gig setup on my compaq to their 2 X 2 and it has worked flawlessly for 6 months now. And 2 filled memory slots should work more efficiently than 4 slots JMHO.
Dave

 

[jsigur]

no real need to upgrade to DDr3 till you upgrade your system totally

 

[thehoop]

First of all thanks all for your answers! much appreciated!

I believe the issue has now evolved from upgrading to DDR3 for performance increase to upgarding to DD3 for making some profit too :lol:

I'll have a look in the Crucial website although I'll probably scour the ASUS forums as well to see if people had any particular models working without problems. I guess I'll do something only if I'm 100% that it will work.

 

[thehoop]

Go to the Crucial website and download their memory/ motherboard eval and it should tell you exactly which ddr3 memory to order and they do back it if it doesn't work. I ran it to upgrade from a mismatched 1 and 2 gig setup on my compaq to their 2 X 2 and it has worked flawlessly for 6 months now. And 2 filled memory slots should work more efficiently than 4 slots JMHO.
Dave

Hi Dave,

I followed your advice and spoke to Maria(one of the online advisors of Crucial) and she told me all Corsair modules have lifetime warranty and I could return it for whatever reason within 45 days. So if it doesn't work I'm sending it back.

So I'm considering getting this:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=FF1BFD01A5CA7304

But I think I need more research first..

 

[stillerfan15]

Hi Dave,

I followed your advice and spoke to Maria(one of the online advisors of Crucial) and she told me all Corsair modules have lifetime warranty and I could return it for whatever reason within 45 days. So if it doesn't work I'm sending it back.

So I'm considering getting this:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=FF1BFD01A5CA7304

But I think I need more research first..

http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/
Try this memory/ motherboard scanner - it will tell you the Crucial memory that is compatible for you. But you do need to consider upgrading the rest of your system also as others have said.
Dave

 

[thehoop]

Thanks for that I'll give it a try from home(im at work now)

 

[stillerfan15]

Thanks for that I'll give it a try from home(im at work now)

It worked perfectly for me so it should be good for you too with Crucials return policy. Let us know how it works out.
Dave

 

[Guest]

It worked perfectly for me so it should be good for you too with Crucials return policy. Let us know how it works out.
Dave

Please what are the recent experiments on upgrading that asusp5kc memory to DDR3. I may buy similar mb in case some DDR3 1066/1333mhz found to work with it. The seller had problem with
:Apache DDR3 1333mhz unb 10600 cl9.

 

[thehoop]

I recently bought some Kingston Genesis Grey HyperX so when I install it I'll let you know!