[m16si]

My cousin is buying a new rig.

He is going to buy Gigabyte GA-EP45T-DS3 motherboard.

And we were wondering what is better, 2x 2GB ram or 4x 1GB ram ???


What do you think?


Thnx for advice

Cheerzz

[CoffeeFiend]

There's no point in getting smaller sticks. It just fills up more slots for nothing, so the next time you want to upgrade, you'll have to discard some of your existing RAM first (if not all, like if you wanted to upgrade to 8GB, whereas with 2x2GB you'd just add more). Plus, it's no cheaper.

[Nerwin]

Yup, Get 2X2GB. And like what Crahak says, if you wanna upgrade to 8gb sometimes, you wont have to discard the other memory modules.

[puntoMX]

The reason why people went before with 1GB sticks went is that they had better timings, but that seems to be history these days; there are good and not expensive 2GB sticks with tight timings.

What CPU are you going to use any way?

[jcarle]

These are amazing and inexpensive at the same time : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231148

[CoffeeFiend]

jcarle, on Nov 23 2008, 11:26 PM, said:

These are amazing and inexpensive at the same time : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231148

In fact, I was considering ordering some of that, and seeing how well it plays with my existing OCZ Platinum... Partly because I don't want to play the mail in rebate thing with OCZ stuff again (didn't get it back last time)

[puntoMX]

I use A-DATA Vitesta 4GB (2 x 2GB), and I like them. They run at 4-4-4-9 @ 822MT/s but are a pain when overclocking higher than 900MHz.

[weEvil]

Larger ram sticks are better. If you can get a 1 x 4GB you can get 16GB on the board.

[ripken204]

puntoMX, on Nov 23 2008, 11:03 PM, said:

The reason why people went before with 1GB sticks went is that they had better timings, but that seems to be history these days; there are good and not expensive 2GB sticks with tight timings.

What CPU are you going to use any way?

punto is correct, people made a big fuss over that a few years ago, go for the 2x2GB packages now.

also, you need DDR3, do not go to the links posted above.
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mother...?ProductID=2852

the website for your mobo says it support ddr3, there is no mention of ddr2. ddr3 is more expensive than ddr2 at this time but the prices are falling pretty fast.

This post has been edited by ripken204: 24 November 2008 - 11:16 PM

[jcarle]

Missed the DDR3 part... still not used to the fact that there are starting to be people that are using that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820231193 would be my suggestion in that case.

[ripken204]

ya ddr3 is just going to make things different now, especially the tri-channel packs.

[CoffeeFiend]

jcarle, on Nov 25 2008, 01:30 AM, said:

url="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193"]http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820231193[/url] would be my suggestion in that case.

DDR3 is dropping down in price so fast it's unbelievable (ncix even has a 2x1GB 1333 CL9 kit on for $40). That's perhaps twice as much as a decent DDR2 kit goes for, which isn't too bad of a price premium for such cutting edge stuff.

Some mobos for Core i7 can be had for cheap-ish too already (~$50 more than good P45 mobos -- not bad at all for a X58 board!). Now if only core i7 had price drops... It's gonna be pretty cheap soon I guess.

This post has been edited by crahak: 25 November 2008 - 01:23 AM

[ripken204]

yes but i would suggest waiting for the revision of it, there are always issues with new architectures. there are not that many motherboards to choose from and no decent kits of ram yet.
next summer is when i believe we will see i7 in its full glory

[puntoMX]

Indeed, why buy a dual channel DDR3 motherboard with a P45 chipset.

Or you stay with DDR2 and go for the P45, or go with DDR3 and the X58 (new rev. or not).

If he´s on a budget then just go for the DDR2 P45 motherboard and if you pick gigabyte then go for the Ultra Durable 3 series...

He would be better of spending less on the chipset and RAM (read DDR3) and go for a faster storage setup or video card.


ripken204, long time no see .

jcarle, on Nov 25 2008, 12:30 AM, said:

Missed the DDR3 part... still not used to the fact that there are starting to be people that are using that.

Same here .

[weEvil]

ripken204, on Nov 25 2008, 11:22 AM, said:

next summer is when i believe we will see i7 in its full glory

Or AMD rise from the dead.

[CoffeeFiend]

weEvil, on Nov 26 2008, 04:53 PM, said:

Or AMD rise from the dead.

From the performance increases we've seen on their brand spanking new Opterons (Shanghai), and assuming their desktop chips make as much progress... It'll still take more than that to catch up to i7 unfortunately. I guess they'll keep being the budget CPU company for a while longer.

Anyhow. I just bought 4GB more of Corsair today (2x Antec 300, 2x Seasonic SS-350ET, 4GB of 800MHz Corsair DDR2 and 2 pairs of Sony earphones for $200.93 CAD including UPS dlivery and taxes in!) I'll soon find out how it plays with the old OCZ.

This post has been edited by crahak: 26 November 2008 - 07:11 PM

[weEvil]

crahak, on Nov 26 2008, 08:07 PM, said:

weEvil, on Nov 26 2008, 04:53 PM, said:

Or AMD rise from the dead.

From the performance increases we've seen on their brand spanking new Opterons (Shanghai), and assuming their desktop chips make as much progress... It'll still take more than that to catch up to i7 unfortunately. I guess they'll keep being the budget CPU company for a while longer.

Anyhow. I just bought 4GB more of Corsair today (2x Antec 300, 2x Seasonic SS-350ET, 4GB of 800MHz Corsair DDR2 and 2 pairs of Sony earphones for $200.93 CAD including UPS dlivery and taxes in!) I'll soon find out how it plays with the old OCZ.

Having the best chip is not necessarily the most important. Price to performance counts alot.

As long as it can hold its own against i7 at a fraction of the cost AMD has a winner.

[CoffeeFiend]

Of course it's a a little of both.

But the way it looks now, the next AMD CPUs will be slower than the entry model Core i7, which will soon be a lot cheaper as Intel will stop selling all C2D's in the next few months. AMD may have a cheaper offering, but when it's slower than the entry level Intel CPU... Just like the current Phenoms, they're dirt cheap because they're just not fast (comparatively speaking). Just like the old AMD & Cyrix days, cheaper but slower.

It might be good enough for some people, but not really enough for a company to "rise from the dead" (like when the Athlon64 was kicking netburst's butt)

[weEvil]

crahak, on Nov 27 2008, 01:19 AM, said:

Of course it's a a little of both.

But the way it looks now, the next AMD CPUs will be slower than the entry model Core i7, which will soon be a lot cheaper as Intel will stop selling all C2D's in the next few months. AMD may have a cheaper offering, but when it's slower than the entry level Intel CPU... Just like the current Phenoms, they're dirt cheap because they're just not fast (comparatively speaking). Just like the old AMD & Cyrix days, cheaper but slower.

It might be good enough for some people, but not really enough for a company to "rise from the dead" (like when the Athlon64 was kicking netburst's butt)

I doubt Intel will stop selling Core2Duo for at least 8-12months. But they will be cutting back the weaker models as usual. Core2Duo will remain entry-mainstream level for some time.

Also, you are not taking into account the cost of the platform. Its not just the CPU that's costly. AMD needs to cut the cost of the motherboards next.

[CoffeeFiend]

Check the latest Intel roadmap. Most C2D's (and even Quads) are being discontinued in the next 6 months. And with more i7 models being added soon and upcoming price drops (also on DDR3 and such), it'll quickly become mainstream.

And yes, I'm looking at the price of the whole platform too. Good AMD motherboards (the very few of them) aren't any cheaper. And yes, DDR3 may cost more now, but that's also very quickly changing. Give it a year, and it just might cost the same.

Edit: also looks like I'm gonna bump up RAM to 8GB instead of 6GB (someone I know with 2x2GB of DDR2 800MHz on his hands and no use for it!)

This post has been edited by crahak: 27 November 2008 - 04:27 PM