Would you buy 1GB RAM sticks or 512MB sticks??

[rapaz]

I'm building a new PC from scratch very soon...

1)I am inclined to get 2GB of RAM because I'm led to believe that if I get 1GB then I will need another pretty one soon anyway- what do you all think?

The main question I have is:

2)Should I buy 512MB sticks or 1GB sticks and would it depend on the answer to the first question?

As I always mention in my posts - I'm wanting this PC for gaming (as most of you probably do) so please gear your answers to a gaming set-up.

[lethal]

That depeds in your budget.... if you are going for everything top of the line the 2Gbs should be pretty useful for some of the most demanding games out there... OTOH, if you are going for a more budget minded PC 1 GB should be enough for the moment... it all depends on what are you goint to buy, otherwise the 2 Gb would be overkill in most situations.

BTW, 512kB is about 1/3 of a floppy

[Coldfirex]

Id love to see some 512kB sticks work in todays systems.

[mykl_Dunn]

2)Should I buy 512kB

kB?

[Wajo]

512kb sticks were what?? SIMM's ? or EDO ? i guess they were from the time of 1-2 Mb computers... and i remember 8 mb models using simm's

[ozymandias]

I think you mean 512 MB sticks. My first computer carried 512 kB sticks in it, but I bet you won't run any recent programs on it.

If you really want to game, get 2GB. Otherwise, get 1 GB as with normal windows programs, you won't notice the difference. You do notice a difference with certain games though (bf2 comes to mind). If you can choose between value 2 GB or overclockers 1 GB, I'd favour the value ram...

[rapaz]

oops!! Half-asleep I think!

Obviously 512MB

[mykl_Dunn]

Obviously 512MB

Yea, on the keyboard the "K" is adjacent the "M".

[rapaz]

Yeah exactly, thanks mykl_Dunn

[Coran Fixx]

Looks like about $25 price premium between 2x512 and 1 x 1024.
What should you get? What else are you getting?

If you are scratching together a system, a total of $50 maybe a big deal. Since you are getting 2gb ram, I'm guessing your not doing that.

If you buy $500 video cards like picking up a gallon of milk from the store then get the 2 1gig sticks.

One thing I could say against the gig sticks are that the cas timings aren't as tight. Don't know how much you will notice that in system performance.

[JustAnEngineer]

One thing I could say against the gig sticks are that the cas timings aren't as tight.

Ahem.
The Patriot PEP1G3200LL works fine for me with its stock timings (2-3-2-5-1T) at stock speed (200MHz), but it doesn't like much of an overclock at stock voltage.

[rapaz]

Thanks for your input.

I guess if I'm spending all this money I might aswell spend a bit more and get the 1GB sticks. I mean if sticks of 1GB are going to improve performance overall then I should get them, right?

That's what it comes down to in the end - PERFORMANCE

I'll most likely be getting a DFI lanparty nf4 SLI-DR. I know it is quite picky about its RAM. I've hear that Corsair are a no no for this mobo. And that OCZ are a good choice. What about Kingston? If 4x512MB are gonna get me better performance than 2x1GB sticks then I'll get the 512 sticks. What do you think?

[Thebolt]

Go with the 2 x 1GB deffinitly.

The latencies of single sticks may be generally lower on 512 MB sticks but with the 4 sticks of 512 you'll take a latency hit having so many sticks anyways that it would at least cancel out. Thatll leave some expansion room for more ram if the need arises in a year or two, not that the rest of the components would be up to par...

[rapaz]

I see your logic! Next thing for me is to work out which 1GB sticks I should go for! If the diff in performance is negligable between an expensive stick of ram and one a little less pricey, then I would probably get the cheaper one and put more money into the g-card or on other things.

The only brands that seem to be sold in this country are Corsair, OCZ and Kingston. Corsair has been said to be a bad choice if I get a DFI lanparty nf4 SLI-DR. So I guess that leaves me with OCZ and Kingston.

(if you're interested in seeing what limited choice we get in this country then here you go:
http://www.digitec.ch/ check out Arbeitsspeicher (RAM) on l-hand side
http://www.brack.ch/aspx/default.aspx check out 'memory' on r-hand side) if you refer to these pages then you know exactly what I have to choose from. Much appreciated as always!

[Trapnal]

2 GIG ALL THE WAY

[tsoulier]

Got to have the 1 gig sticks

[Joeg_7]

actually if you look at the nf4 sli-dr on the dfi website and click on the link that says recommended memory for overclocking you'll see that dfi recommends corsair memory along with a few others.

[Coran Fixx]

I have the non SLI DFI mb and I can tell you my motherboard doesn't like the corsair memory.

[drfish]

I can't believe no one mentioned this article at Anandtech yet... And you call yourselves geeks...

[rapaz]

Thanks guys!

I'm checkin' out the links now.

[Usacomp2k3]

Moved to SBA.

[Zhaine]

I'm running 2x1Gb stick of corsair XMS3200 on a DFI nf4 ultra and I've had no problems. . .so far :s. . . where did you hear this stuff?