2gb ddr400 or 3gb ddr333?

The Gangrel · Post by **The Gangrel** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:22 pm

My socket 754 motherboard supports 2gb of ddr400 or 3gb ddr333. Seeing as I use virtual machines a lot that extra ram could come in handy.

Will the reduction is fsb speed be very noticable or will the extra 1gb of ram more than make up for that?

aaa · Post by **aaa** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:46 pm

It's not a makes up for what issue. It's which do you need most.

I would say that the memory speed makes very little difference for the kind of stuff you're doing. And since virtual machines take lots of memory I would go for the 3gb.

Scoop · Post by **Scoop** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:49 pm

Using Win XP you're well off with the 2GB. It's faster and you can use it in dual channel setup (I would assume). In Vista you might want to go with 3GB and give up some speed.

Traciatim · Post by **Traciatim** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:21 pm

I think this one only comes down to one question: Do you think you will really be doing lots of stuff that regularly uses up all of your 2GB of RAM? If the answer to that is yes, then more will be more useful than less and faster.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:29 pm

I have 3GB of RAM, and even though it does seem like a lot, even with what i do, i haven't been able to really put it under load, or be able to really utilize 100% of it. I do lots of audio editing and i use photoshop, and will even more because i have a tablet on the way, however i'd suggest the 2gb of RAM.

my upgrade path was 1gb initially and i bought a 2gb set when it was cheaper. even though RAM is getting cheap, unless you really need it, 2gb is more than enough. i usually give VMWare 1024mb of RAM now that i can, and that still leaves plenty for the host. in any OS that i've run, RAM usage is minimal, and i prefer Unix/BSD based OS's. even with windows, not all that much RAM is used in XP, which is why the recommended amount is around 512mb.

i'd say go with the faster ram, and you'll have a better overall liking of it, because more RAM is arguably wasted.