RAM brands?
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RAM brands?
Newegg sells two brands of RAM I have never used called Patriot and Gigaram. Prices on each are attractive, something between bargain-basement value memory and the cheapest overclockers' stuff, but where does quality lie? Has anyone used these brands? Patriot I know is fairly well-known, but I've never even heard of Gigaram.
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merovingian
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Shining Arcanine
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Re: RAM brands?
Quality lies in name brand memory.Mar. wrote:Newegg sells two brands of RAM I have never used called Patriot and Gigaram. Prices on each are attractive, something between bargain-basement value memory and the cheapest overclockers' stuff, but where does quality lie? Has anyone used these brands? Patriot I know is fairly well-known, but I've never even heard of Gigaram.
Re: RAM brands?
That's not really what I meant... I mean, how does the quality of these somewhat cheaper brands compare to name-brand but "value" memory, and the overclockers' stuff?Shining Arcanine wrote:
Quality lies in name brand memory.
Never, ever, ever use patriot. Every build i have ever made with patriot ram has been unstable.
RAM is probably the most important thing in a sytem when it comes to stability, crappy ram will give you crappy stability, spend the little extra money and get some Corsair or OCZ Ram (doesn't even have to be the high end overclocker stuff, just make sure its from a good brand - patriot and gigaram are not good brands.)
For a more detailed explanation:
When RAM manufactures are building their RAM sticks they take all the little memory chips that go on the sticks and test them. The better the chips test, the higher the line they go into. ie: OCZ platinum enhanced latency PC5000 RAM will have the best chips in it. The chips that dont perform as well get put in the next highest line, and so on and so forth. Budget memory manufactures (like patriot and gigaram) are so cheap because they buy the chips that none of the good manufactures want, because they chips dont perform well, hence shitty chips = shitty ram = shitty performance/stability.
RAM is probably the most important thing in a sytem when it comes to stability, crappy ram will give you crappy stability, spend the little extra money and get some Corsair or OCZ Ram (doesn't even have to be the high end overclocker stuff, just make sure its from a good brand - patriot and gigaram are not good brands.)
For a more detailed explanation:
When RAM manufactures are building their RAM sticks they take all the little memory chips that go on the sticks and test them. The better the chips test, the higher the line they go into. ie: OCZ platinum enhanced latency PC5000 RAM will have the best chips in it. The chips that dont perform as well get put in the next highest line, and so on and so forth. Budget memory manufactures (like patriot and gigaram) are so cheap because they buy the chips that none of the good manufactures want, because they chips dont perform well, hence shitty chips = shitty ram = shitty performance/stability.
i can't say anything for gigaram, but i do own a gig of patriots based on tccd (2-2-2 timings). i also own a gig of corsair value ram and some corsair 2-3-3-6. all perform about the same, as far as i can tell. i use them in similar setups (a64 machines, overclocked with dividers), and they're all pretty fast.
patriot is a respectable brand in my opinion. their service is also pretty good; i emailed them a few times when i thought the sticks weren't running at rated speeds and their responses were prompt. the problem turned out to be my motherboard, since different brands of ram crapped out at the same speed on that particular board.
personally, if i were in the market for ram i'd spring for a gig of the corsair value stuff first (since it's the cheapest) and then the patriots. in my experience the performance boost you'd get with the ~170-200 dollar stuff is negligible, and hardly worth the extra cash. also, the money saved by going with the value ram could be put toward other things, like a faster video card, which would yield a much more noticeable increase in performance.
patriot is a respectable brand in my opinion. their service is also pretty good; i emailed them a few times when i thought the sticks weren't running at rated speeds and their responses were prompt. the problem turned out to be my motherboard, since different brands of ram crapped out at the same speed on that particular board.
personally, if i were in the market for ram i'd spring for a gig of the corsair value stuff first (since it's the cheapest) and then the patriots. in my experience the performance boost you'd get with the ~170-200 dollar stuff is negligible, and hardly worth the extra cash. also, the money saved by going with the value ram could be put toward other things, like a faster video card, which would yield a much more noticeable increase in performance.
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merovingian
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I have TCCD, I have tested it to confirm the real truth by changing up my timings.
real truth about ram
I'm running my TCCD@578 2-3-3-7, benefit is that in the future when software is written to take advantage of the higher bandwidth and dual core processing I won't have a ram bottle neck.
real truth about ram
I'm running my TCCD@578 2-3-3-7, benefit is that in the future when software is written to take advantage of the higher bandwidth and dual core processing I won't have a ram bottle neck.
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~El~Jefe~
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Well, you wont have a bottleneck ever I would imagine so long as you can reduce latencies... amd is no intel.
Zebo is the king of ram. he says that the best possible ram situation, barring that freaky super voltage stuff, has almost no difference in performance on an amd system. Get a revision E and well, you wont see much of a difference in stability either.
Zebo is geek king of ramdom. I read all of his posts that I could find, kinda scary how much he tests, but all the same, the dood is just about always right.
Patriot received very high approvals on the sites that have tested it. It is just cheaper, I wouldnt worry about it as much. If you want super stable, go get Crucial ram, which is micron ram, and very much tested. It is a little bit more expensive but eh not much, old company with great customer service.
I use Centon ram. yeah, imagine that eh? 1 gig dim modules work perfectly every time in each setup i use. I think the trick is to never use more than 2 dim slots and you then cant go wrong with most brands.
Oh, i have had corsair take a big crap on me before when i tried using multiple sticks on a winchester, but generic samsung low tier ram worked perfectly. shrugs.
Zebo is the king of ram. he says that the best possible ram situation, barring that freaky super voltage stuff, has almost no difference in performance on an amd system. Get a revision E and well, you wont see much of a difference in stability either.
Zebo is geek king of ramdom. I read all of his posts that I could find, kinda scary how much he tests, but all the same, the dood is just about always right.
Patriot received very high approvals on the sites that have tested it. It is just cheaper, I wouldnt worry about it as much. If you want super stable, go get Crucial ram, which is micron ram, and very much tested. It is a little bit more expensive but eh not much, old company with great customer service.
I use Centon ram. yeah, imagine that eh? 1 gig dim modules work perfectly every time in each setup i use. I think the trick is to never use more than 2 dim slots and you then cant go wrong with most brands.
Oh, i have had corsair take a big crap on me before when i tried using multiple sticks on a winchester, but generic samsung low tier ram worked perfectly. shrugs.
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merovingian
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Yeah, he was going to get the BFG 7800GTX until I posted that it wouldn't work on water which was why I was going with the XFX 490Mhz version. Then he was on me about testing it. But I already have the waterblock on it so I don't think I'm going to do it. He loves to test stuff all the time, its a little odd but pretty cool.
As far as the bottleneck, if you look at zebos post the PC2700 are actually slower by a bit than the 3200 which is the reason why I think that in the future the "faster" ram will stand up longer. I would go with the corsair value ram if I were to do it again.
As far as the bottleneck, if you look at zebos post the PC2700 are actually slower by a bit than the 3200 which is the reason why I think that in the future the "faster" ram will stand up longer. I would go with the corsair value ram if I were to do it again.