RAM recommendations

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 6:52 am

Does it matter much what brand of RAM I use if I won't overclock?
I plan to undervolt and underclock CPU, but problably keep RAM at stock volt.
I might lower FSB.

Easilly available choices are (less expensive first):
Noname
A-Data
Apacer CL2.5
Apacer CL2
TwinMOS
Samsung
OCZ (matched pair CL2)

Most expensive is ~60% more than least expensive.
Samsung is about 19% more than A-Data, so most middle candidates are rather close in price.

I will run with very low airflow, so low power dissipation is of some value.
Any chance that I will need to cool my RAM with heatsinks?

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 7:12 am

silvervarg wrote:Does it matter much what brand of RAM I use if I won't overclock?
I plan to undervolt and underclock CPU, but problably keep RAM at stock volt.
I might lower FSB.

Easilly available choices are (less expensive first):
Noname
A-Data
Apacer CL2.5
Apacer CL2
TwinMOS
Samsung
OCZ (matched pair CL2)

Most expensive is ~60% more than least expensive.
Samsung is about 19% more than A-Data, so most middle candidates are rather close in price.

I will run with very low airflow, so low power dissipation is of some value.
Any chance that I will need to cool my RAM with heatsinks?

What CPU/mobo?

I definitely would not go with no-name or off-brand RAM, it's too important and too easy to get crappy RAM when you're trying to cut corners.

I'd stick with name-brand RAM from companies with good customer service/warranties/return policies like Crucial, Kingston, Corsair and Mushkin.

Not knowing what CPU/mobo you're using I an't comment specifically but Crucial might be a very goo choice for a system that looks like it won't be OCed or leaned on too heavily. Kingston is also good RAM that shows up on sale (and with rebates) quite often at the Best Buy/Circut City types of places here in the US.

You certainly won't need to cool your RAM with heatsinks. The whole "memory heatspreader" thing is mostly marketing hype and deserves it's own entry in the "Dubious Marketing" thread.

UrbanVoyeur · Post by **UrbanVoyeur** » Tue Nov 25, 2003 8:04 am

Whether you need to cool your RAM depends on a coupl of things -
- how fast you are running your RAM & whether you are over clocking
- whether your RAM is in localized hot area in your case
- how densely packed the ram is
- how much RAM you have installed.

For example:
In my home system, the RAM is in a area with relatively little air flow. There are 4 512 Crucial modules and they give off a lot of heat. When I actively cool the RAM, I can overclock - I think in part because the RAM is near the northbridge and cooling one cools the other.

At work, my system will lock up if the RAM is run without heatsinks.

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 1:15 am

Ofcouse I should have added more details...
I still havent bought any of the components, but here is my plan:
Barton 2500+ undervolted and probably underclocked
Abit NF7-M motherboard (NForce2 chipset with onboard VGA).
I plan to use 2 sticks of RAM (256MB each).

I just checked a few places before, checking a little bit more I can find 3 of the 4 brands mentioned. I was just hoping to keep the places I order from to a minimum.
Kingston value, Crucial and Corsair value is about the same price as most of the other RAM I checked.
Mushkin seems hard to find here.

The return policy of the manufacturer is not a big concern assuming all problems occur rather soon as the law here regulates things like that a lot.
However a good return policy usually means high quality (or the return policy would be very expencive for the manufacturer).

I guess CL2 timings won't give me much in performance, right?
It seems that price goes up ~25% to get CL2 timings.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 5:25 am

I'd probably go with Crucial or Kingston, whichever is easier to get and/or cheaper.

Please stay away from the no-name and off-brand RAM, your system (and your sanity) will thank you for it.

lucienrau · Post by **lucienrau** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 7:39 am

I know that the N-force 2 mobo's are picky about what ram they want. I've had good luck using Kinston value ram. (I use 2-256 modules of PC2700 Kingston ram in my MSI-K7N2 Delta mobo and I've had no problems). Some Nforce boards have problems with Crucial ram, but you should check your manufacturer's website to see if they have a recommendation first.

Bean · Post by **Bean** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 7:51 am

silvervarg wrote:I guess CL2 timings won't give me much in performance, right?
It seems that price goes up ~25% to get CL2 timings.

Wrong. CAS 2 should get you better performance. Of course I could be wrong

. I will mention Corsair is considered a very good choice if not the best which explains its markup (mushkin's bh5 is highly regard WRT AMD overclockers and Ralf

. You were right in using Dual Channel as it will give better performance with onboard video.

I'd follow Ralphs advice and not skimp on the quality of the RAM. But with Memtest, at least you can test the RAM.

chrono · Post by **chrono** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 7:57 am

get the OCZ. I have a nice dual channel PC3500 running, i couldnt be happier.

Bean · Post by **Bean** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 10:12 am

Seriously, since you have onboard video, the IGP shares memory bandwith with system RAM. So, I would prob put more money on the getting Low Latency CAS2 and even matched pairs for Dual Channel. That is my take on things from reading other forums. I dont have an IGP board. yet. Have you dug around on other forums? (unfortunatly most of the posts are of problems and overclock but if you dig)
[url=urlhttp://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?s=cbba83ef90e071ce9edb24d45e61105a&threadid=29076&perpage=15&pagenumber=1url]Abit[/url]
http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.ph ... adid=29076

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 9:53 pm

OCZ, TwinMos or Samsung

D

ghowarth · Post by **ghowarth** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 1:22 am

I would say avoid the Samsung. I have two sticks, and they are both unstable at 333mhz with my Asus board. Could be Asus's fault, but who knows...

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:22 am

ghowarth wrote:I would say avoid the Samsung. I have two sticks, and they are both unstable at 333mhz with my Asus board. Could be Asus's fault, but who knows...

are they samsung originals or samsung chips on something built by someone ?

D

ghowarth · Post by **ghowarth** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 4:36 pm

Korean memory manufacturers only make the memory chips - they get those assembled on the sticks in Taiwan or some place by another company.

Graham

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 4:40 pm

ghowarth wrote:Korean memory manufacturers only make the memory chips - they get those assembled on the sticks in Taiwan or some place by another company.

Graham

well Ive seen samsung originals and samsung chips on generic modules
so even if they dont assemble their own modules (which would be odd) they still have a good company do it (they wouldnt risk having a lame one do it) so the ones having the samsung label should still be better than generic ones with samsung chips

D

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 5:05 pm

Ralf Hutter wrote:I'd probably go with Crucial or Kingston, whichever is easier to get and/or cheaper.

Please stay away from the no-name and off-brand RAM, your system (and your sanity) will thank you for it.

On the subject of RAM, what is the point (percentage) of free RAM that should be considered safe margin for performance? Example, 37% free considered good? Can one have too much free RAM and it causes some kind of negative effect on performance?

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 5:14 pm

JVM wrote:
Ralf Hutter wrote:I'd probably go with Crucial or Kingston, whichever is easier to get and/or cheaper.

Please stay away from the no-name and off-brand RAM, your system (and your sanity) will thank you for it.
On the subject of RAM, what is the point (percentage) of free RAM that should be considered safe margin for performance? Example, 37% free considered good? Can one have too much free RAM and it causes some kind of negative effect on performance?

winME, 98,95 simly cant work with more than 512mb of ram (it will hang)
nt. win2k and xp will take any amounts and work aok
however you dont need more than 512mb 99% of the time and probably wont need it 100% of the time
and no one besides servers need over 1gb

simply put lots of ram wont slow you down but you wont need more than 512 so get 512 and live happily

D

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 5:00 am

JVM wrote:
Ralf Hutter wrote:I'd probably go with Crucial or Kingston, whichever is easier to get and/or cheaper.

Please stay away from the no-name and off-brand RAM, your system (and your sanity) will thank you for it.
On the subject of RAM, what is the point (percentage) of free RAM that should be considered safe margin for performance? Example, 37% free considered good? Can one have too much free RAM and it causes some kind of negative effect on performance?

It doesn't really matter too much.

With a modern OS like Win2000 and even more so with WinXP the memory management is quiet good. The operating system handles memory usage well, even when the used memory is a high percentage of the available memory.

Worst case, it's starts hitting the pagefile harder and harder. The page file is a reserved area on the HDD that acts as "virtual"memory for when the physical memory is being used up. The CPU swaps applications back and forth between the physical RAM and the virtual RAM (the "pagefile") as needed to keep things running smoothly. By default, the OS dynamically resizes the Pagefile as necessary to prevent the OS from running out of memory. This keeps the OS and apps from crashing as the physical memory is being used up.

The biggest downside to relying on the Pagefile to make up for not enough physical memory is that the speed of the pagefile is way, way, way slower than the speed of the physical memory. Things start running slower and slower as more memory is paged out to the HDD (pagefile), this is why it's a real good idea to have enough physical RAM to keep this from happening too much.

WinXP really needs around 512MB of physical RAM to run at it's best. 256MB should be considered the absolute minimum. If you do a lot of work with large graphic files or play some of the newest games in would be beneficial to have over 512MB of RAM, but otherwise 512MB is the sweet-spot for WinXP with today's larger memory footprint applications.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 6:48 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:
JVM wrote:
Ralf Hutter wrote:I'd probably go with Crucial or Kingston, whichever is easier to get and/or cheaper.

Please stay away from the no-name and off-brand RAM, your system (and your sanity) will thank you for it.
On the subject of RAM, what is the point (percentage) of free RAM that should be considered safe margin for performance? Example, 37% free considered good? Can one have too much free RAM and it causes some kind of negative effect on performance?
It doesn't really matter too much.

With a modern OS like Win2000 and even more so with WinXP the memory management is quiet good. The operating system handles memory usage well, even when the used memory is a high percentage of the available memory.

Worst case, it's starts hitting the pagefile harder and harder. The page file is a reserved area on the HDD that acts as "virtual"memory for when the physical memory is being used up. The CPU swaps applications back and forth between the physical RAM and the virtual RAM (the "pagefile") as needed to keep things running smoothly. By default, the OS dynamically resizes the Pagefile as necessary to prevent the OS from running out of memory. This keeps the OS and apps from crashing as the physical memory is being used up.

The biggest downside to relying on the Pagefile to make up for not enough physical memory is that the speed of the pagefile is way, way, way slower than the speed of the physical memory. Things start running slower and slower as more memory is paged out to the HDD (pagefile), this is why it's a real good idea to have enough physical RAM to keep this from happening too much.

WinXP really needs around 512MB of physical RAM to run at it's best. 256MB should be considered the absolute minimum. If you do a lot of work with large graphic files or play some of the newest games in would be beneficial to have over 512MB of RAM, but otherwise 512MB is the sweet-spot for WinXP with today's larger memory footprint applications.

If one didn't play any of those demanding games or work with large graphic files and just did average stuff with XP, would having 1024 MB RAM have any negative effect? Just a waste of money?

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 7:01 am

Absolutely no negative effect at all, unlike good 'ol Win98 where more=worse after a certain point.

If you feel like future-proofing a bit I suppose you could go with 1GB of RAM. Newer applications are using more and more RAM as time goes by. The thing is, new memory technology will also be coming along in the future so if (or when) you upgrade you may well be getting rid of your current DDR RAM anyway.

Unless you have a good reason to expect you'll be needing more than 512MB of memory over the next year or so, I'd just stick with 512MB for now. You could always add a couple more sticks later if the need becomes pressing.

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 9:10 am

JVM wrote:
If one didn't play any of those demanding games or work with large graphic files and just did average stuff with XP, would having 1024 MB RAM have any negative effect? Just a waste of money?

what am I invisible ??
to quote myself "simply put lots of ram wont slow you down but you wont need more than 512 so get 512 and live happily "

D

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 10:34 am

ZL1 wrote:
JVM wrote:
If one didn't play any of those demanding games or work with large graphic files and just did average stuff with XP, would having 1024 MB RAM have any negative effect? Just a waste of money?

what am I invisible ??
to quote myself "simply put lots of ram wont slow you down but you wont need more than 512 so get 512 and live happily "

D

Sorry, didn't mean to offend. I was just curious at to what Ralf thought.

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 11:08 am

JVM wrote:
ZL1 wrote:
JVM wrote:
If one didn't play any of those demanding games or work with large graphic files and just did average stuff with XP, would having 1024 MB RAM have any negative effect? Just a waste of money?

what am I invisible ??
to quote myself "simply put lots of ram wont slow you down but you wont need more than 512 so get 512 and live happily "

D
Sorry, didn't mean to offend. I was just curious at to what Ralf thought.

me sorry too, might have overreacted

D

sbabb · Post by **sbabb** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 9:50 pm

GROUP HUG!

Ralf, are you OCing that Mushkin? Just wondering because I thought the Level 2 was able to run at 2-2-2-6-1T but your sig shows 2-3-3-6.

Scott

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Nov 29, 2003 5:46 am

sbabb wrote:GROUP HUG!

Ralf, are you OCing that Mushkin? Just wondering because I thought the Level 2 was able to run at 2-2-2-6-1T but your sig shows 2-3-3-6.

Scott

The set on my Intel board is running at 2-3-3-6 because the Intel board only gives 2.5Vdimm and is, of course, non-adjustable. It'll actually run at 2-3-2-6, 100% Memtest86 stable but I keep the timings backed down a little for extra stability headroom.

The set on the Asus board is running at 2-3-2-6, 2.65V. It'll run at 2-2-2-6 but I have to give it 2.75V so I don't bother. I can't see any performance difference in the slightly tighter timing so I just run it a bit slower with less Vdimm.

It's quite difficult to get RAM to run with a RAS to CAS latency of "2" on these 875/865 boards. They're real picky about this. Doing it usually requires, 1) High quality BH-5 RAM and, 2) extra Vdimm.

BTW - No, right now I'm not OCing my RAM but I have played with the Asus board and run the RAM at 220MHz, 2-3-3-6, 2.75V, 100% Memtest86 stable.

Bat · Post by **Bat** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 10:57 am

I forget where, but I remember reading an article comparing the power requirements of memory modules by different manufacturers.

Some motherboards can take, say, 3Gb of DDR333 but only 2Gb of DDR400. According to that article, this is because of the amount of power that they require.

jjr · Post by **jjr** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 5:09 pm

Ralf Hutter wrote: With a modern OS like Win2000 and even more so with WinXP the memory management is quiet good.

This is freudian ....

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:41 pm

ZL1 wrote:
winME, 98,95 simly cant work with more than 512mb of ram (it will hang)
nt. win2k and xp will take any amounts and work aok

Please don't slander the good stuff. OK so ME was a pile of crap but 98SE retail is probably the best peice of plastic MSFT ever released on time.

W9x was intended to be able to address 2 gb of RAM, although subsequent developments have shown that the practical limit is a bit less than that.

To get W9x to work with more than 512mb ram you only have to change one line of text in an ini file. Not exactly rocket science.

To get W9x to work with more than 1gb of ram requires a second edit.

It may be that you have to stick with 1gb if you can't do 1.25GB or 1.5GB on that particular W9x system.

Of couse there aren't too many boards that support more than 768 MB ram that you can find modern 98SE drivers for and the ones that do support more than 512MB of ram can run XP Pro so it isn't that big of an issue.

Personally I wouldn't use anything but 98SE on a PC that has less than 512MB ram.

mshan · Post by **mshan** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:44 pm

Memory based upon the Winbond BH-5 or CH-5 memory chips work very, very well with Nforce2 mobos.

BH-5 will be more expensive than CH-5 because it has better overclocking potential.

ZL1 · Post by **ZL1** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:25 am

dhanson865 wrote:
ZL1 wrote:
winME, 98,95 simly cant work with more than 512mb of ram (it will hang)
nt. win2k and xp will take any amounts and work aok
Please don't slander the good stuff. OK so ME was a pile of crap but 98SE retail is probably the best peice of plastic MSFT ever released on time.

W9x was intended to be able to address 2 gb of RAM, although subsequent developments have shown that the practical limit is a bit less than that.

To get W9x to work with more than 512mb ram you only have to change one line of text in an ini file. Not exactly rocket science.

To get W9x to work with more than 1gb of ram requires a second edit.

It may be that you have to stick with 1gb if you can't do 1.25GB or 1.5GB on that particular W9x system.

Of couse there aren't too many boards that support more than 768 MB ram that you can find modern 98SE drivers for and the ones that do support more than 512MB of ram can run XP Pro so it isn't that big of an issue.

Personally I wouldn't use anything but 98SE on a PC that has less than 512MB ram.

hint - you are quoting a 3yr old post

and btw the best soft that msft ever released is wxp

D

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:58 am

jjr wrote:
Ralf Hutter wrote: With a modern OS like Win2000 and even more so with WinXP the memory management is quiet good.
This is freudian ....

Huh?

RAM recommendations

RAM recommendations

Re: RAM recommendations