Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Help with RAM
Hello everyone, so I have this old Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 water overclocked at 3.44 ghz, 4gb of ram and an AMD r7 260
It is stable and runs even newer games really well.
I want to upgrade the ram to atleast 8gb of ram for the best price vs performance that I can find.
Current RAM in the system is old Kingston that only runs at 400mhz max, so it can perform much better.
It has to obviously be DDR2, so anyone have suggestions?
Also I can post my CPU-Z txt file if anyone needs it to make best choice.
Edit: Its also 64bit of course.
This is what the motherboard supports
- Dual Channel DDR2 memory technology
- 4 x DDR2 DIMM slots
- Supports DDR2 1200/1066/800/667 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Max. capacity of system memory: 16GB
This one is my top choice right now, if you have a better one feel free to post, I would like to keep it under $100 dollar, unless its 16gb. This one below is not bad for DDR2's absurd prices.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226214&cm_re=ddr2-_-20-226-214-_-Product
Comments
Exactly which operating system do you have? In particular, 32-bit or 64-bit?
My advice would probably be not to sink more money into a system that old unless you've got some weird corner case where you really do need more memory capacity but know that it will be a long time before you need a faster CPU.
Its Win7 64bit
I am building an i5 gaming rig, but this system can still run games really well even at 1080p, its not broken and the upgraded ram will definitely help, so Im going to keep it running.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
Then why does CPU-Z say this?
Memory Frequency 382.4 MHz (1:1)
Updated post with MB specs.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
Blah. Sorry.
That choice is DDR3 memory, you need DDR2 for your motherboard.
Best solution would be to check out what kind of RAM you have now, you probably have 2x2GB of something. Then if the same model is still sold at reasonable price, buy another 2x2GB of that same model you already have and you won't have to worry about compatibility problems.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
With no offense but you do not seem to know what you are doing...you are trying to put DDR3 memory into DDR2 board.
More RAM won't make things run faster and it is very, very unlikely that your current 4GB will be a trouble for any game you will run on that rig.
If you still want to upgrade your memory, it would be better to post exact model numbers of your motherboard and memory you are using.
DDR2 might be reported as 400MHz because the internal clock is actually 400MHz - it is the bus clock that is double of the internal clock, allowing for double transfer rate.
That is wrong. DDR is Double Data Rate, which means each bit of memory bus width can transfer two bits of data per clock cycle. Thus, a real clock speed of 400 MHz lets you transfer 800 million bits per second per bit of memory bus width. Memory manufacturers have gotten accustomed to doubling the claimed clock speed so that a real clock speed of 400 MHz will be sold as 800 MHz memory as they're really talking about transfer speeds.
You could say, why don't they just multiply by the memory bus width, too, while they're at it, and call it 12.8 GB/s memory? But the problem is that a 64-bit memory channel can have a 64-bit connection to one module or two 32-bit connections to two different modules, so the memory bandwidth to a given module depends on what else you have in the system.
While most DDR2 systems do use two memory channels, that's not always the case. To take a more recent example with DDR3, surely a given memory module shouldn't be sold as 800 MHz if you use it in a Socket AM1 system, 1600 MHz in an LGA 1150 system, 2400 MHz in an LGA 1366 system, and 3200 MHz in a Socket G34 system, when it's exactly the same memory module running at exactly the same clock speed in all of them.
How do you know that more memory will help? Are you playing some particular game where the memory in use goes over 4 GB for your system, or at least comes very near to it?
Memory is a situation of, if you have enough, more won't help, but if you don't have enough, very bad things happen. So don't buy more memory just to buy it, unless perhaps it's a newer system that you know you're going to keep for a long time and suspect that more will be helpful eventually.
I posted the wrong link doesnt mean I dont know what I am talking about.
The fact you say RAM doesnt decrease latency means you have no idea what your talking about.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
Yes I play a few games where my CPU and GPU can handle the game, but my RAM gets taxed. Playing games with large open worlds that are memory hungry.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
If it's not a 64-bit game--and there are very few 64-bit games--then the game's memory usage is capped at 2 GB. One of the rules of 32-bit programs is that a 32-bit process cannot use more than 2 GB of memory. Unless you're doing other stuff at the same time to also use more than 2 GB, that usually means 4 GB of system memory leaves you plenty of space.
In which particular games are you running out of memory? How much system memory is in use for those games in total, and how much is used by the game itself? This is easy to check in Task Manager. You don't have to guess if you have enough memory; it's easy to measure directly.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
They are 64bit games, H1Z1 for one.
http://www.facebook.com/DEATHREAT
He's actually correct that more RAM doesn't make things run faster. RAM is space, not speed. You'll only need enough space to hold the game/program you're currently running and everything above that is wasted.
More RAM is probably beneficial if you like running multiple other programs, like browser with a lot of windows open, in addition to a game. Most games will however do just fine with 4GB of space and only very few can use more.
The RAM you've now linked to your OP post will probably be fine if you have 2 free RAM slots on your system.
Which begs the question, why the trend towards larger sticks and higher capacity motherboards? Is it just because it's cheap or is there another reason?
Because those memory sticks and chips are not used for gaming only nor gaming drives the advancement of x86 platform...
Die shrinks mean that each DRAM chip has more capacity than before. You can't have fewer than eight chips and have a working module. So there's no point in making modules smaller than eight of the smallest capacity chip. That's why DDR4 starts at 4 GB modules, for example. You can still get 2 GB DDR3 modules, but those take older chips on older process nodes, so they cost more than half the price of 4 GB modules. 1 GB DDR3 modules used to be common but are virtually gone, as they'd use very old process nodes and wouldn't be much cheaper to build than 2 GB modules, so no one would buy them.
It's kind of like how you can't make a hard drive with fewer than 1 platter. You used to be able to buy 8 GB hard drives, but if the smallest platter that still has any point in producing today is 160 GB (a made up number; I'm not sure what the smallest that is still produced is), then there's no point in building smaller capacity hard drives that wouldn't be any cheaper to build.
At the other end, consumers aren't the only things that use DDR3 or DDR4 memory. There are plenty of servers in the world for which having "only" 64 GB would mean that things choke horribly for lack of memory. As far as memory manufacturers go, there is money to be had in catering to customers (e.g., big data centers) who buy memory by the petabyte.
That much is obvious but it doesn't explain why this is the case on all of the performance gaming hardware.
That makes a lot of sense, thank you for the explanation!
That a game is a 64-bit game doesn't automatically mean that it uses more than 2 GB of system memory. Open up Task Manager while you're playing games and check on actual numbers, both of what the game in question is using and for your system in total. Don't just try to guess that maybe you need more memory because of no real reason in particular.