advice on more ram

[osmium]

hey all.

I'm in the market for some more ram (1Gb) and I'm wanting your opinions on a few things of things.

1, with my current setup (see sig) what is more important low (first digit) cas timings, low general (all 4 numbers) cas timings, or a lower latency?

2, what sort of limits in FSB do Nforce2 boards get up to? I'm trying to work out if my ram or my chipset is going to be holding me back?

3, how does my ram rate compared to to the current crop of ram, would I be better off just keeping my current ram (512 stick of ddr 3200 giel cas 2.5, 6, 3, 3 aluminium [blue] heatspreader) adding another of the same and trying to get them to run in dual channel?

load times, usually applications (I often have 6 applications and 12+ windows running at the same time) is probably most important to me, I used to play alot of games but games aren't as imporant anymore (still play a bit though). So I'm weighing up upgrading my graphics card instead.


I know memory types isn't "quite" as important with athlons as P4's and want a good mix of speed and value.

I would like somthing that I can use with future cpu's. I currently have a TbredB and can adjust multipliers so FSB isn't as important but want to future proof in case I get a barton or something with a locked multiplier later.

[sparkles]

1. it's not the setup that determines which timings are more important, it's the application. read more here (http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=memory+timing+explanations&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta=) ;)

2. limits on nforce2 are normally due to overheating on the northbridge, and so it depends on your cooling there. on my (passively cooled northbridge) i get to about 209mhz before running into problems. a number of other people seem to have got to about 220-230 as a very vague kinda max. that one depends on lots of factors though.

3. more regularly now people seem to be buying generic ram, and flicking it off cheap on tardme if it doesn't overclock like jesus. there have been too many cases of generic ram performing as well (if not better) than a lot of expensive "high performance" ram in recent times. i have two sticks of generic ddr400 ram which i run in dual channel mode anywhere between 166-205mhz (depending on how loud i want the system to be).

as far as how many applications you have running at the same time; we need to know how much memory you use at the same time. internet explorer and photoshop windows typically use different amounts of memory ;) under wiondows xp and 2k there is a pretty little performance monitor in the task manager which will give you an idea as to how much ram you use on a regular basis.

if you play anything like bf, then you will love the extra ram. i went from 512mb to 1024mb, and the load times have dropperd from about a minute or two to about 20-30 seconds or so.

with any hardware upgrade you need to be pragmatic. only upgrade something when it does not do something that you need it to do. if you want to spend the money on a new graphics card, it should be because you can't turn on all the pretties in some new game you have purchased. if you lleave your computer running all of the time and want to reduce the loading times of applications, then ram might be a better option. horses for courses people!

[osmium]

Hi thanks for your in-depth reply

As far as I can tell my northbridge is fine,it has the large blue zalaman cooler on it and I have pretty good case airflow - 6 80mm case fans + 170mm when I want to really wind it up (or on hot days) I have a hardcano 2 with temp. probe and seems like the norhtbridge never gets above 30-35 degrees (thats if the probe is touching properly, but I have moved and replaced it once for similar temps.

for applications I use photoshop, dream weaver, heaps of IE windows, adobe, excell, and word. I have seen average usuage around the 300-400meg mark.

I suppose I should probably concentrate on the ram at present because that is where I think needs most improvement. but I am about to load the far cry demo which is supposed to slaughter lower spec systems. My FSB is currently @ 215odd with my giel, I'm too lazy to wind it up much further but I want to stay reasonably future proofed - in particular the ability to overclock with multiplier locked cpu's