A7A266 with SD-RAM or DDR-RAM

[Berthold]

Hello,
need your help / experience.
My son is using an Athlon XP2000+ on a A7A266 board with 512 MB SD-RAM
under WinXP.
He always complains about more speed for his games.
On the A7A266 he can use SD-RAM or DDR-RAM.
How much more performance can he expect using DDR-RAM ?
Should I give it a try and replace it ?
Thanks,
Berthold

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Hello,
need your help / experience.
My son is using an Athlon XP2000+ on a A7A266 board with 512 MB SD-RAM
under WinXP.
He always complains about more speed for his games.
On the A7A266 he can use SD-RAM or DDR-RAM.
How much more performance can he expect using DDR-RAM ?
Should I give it a try and replace it ?
Thanks,
Berthold

Realistically, the gain is not great. Only a few percent for most things (a
bit depends on the speed of the existing RAM - perhaps 20%, if this is
fairly slow). It will help a little, but the thing that has most effect on
modern games is the video card. Some of the new cards, with 128MB on the
card, and built in hardware support for more 3D functions, can make a two or
three times improvement in performance in one hit.

Best Wishes

 

[Berthold]

Hello,

Realistically, the gain is not great. Only a few percent for most things (a
bit depends on the speed of the existing RAM - perhaps 20%, if this is
fairly slow). It will help a little, but the thing that has most effect on
modern games is the video card. Some of the new cards, with 128MB on the
card, and built in hardware support for more 3D functions, can make a two or
three times improvement in performance in one hit.

forgot to mention that he is using a GEFORCE 4 MX 440 128 MB DDR DVI AGP
already

 

[Egil Solberg]

forgot to mention that he is using a GEFORCE 4 MX 440 128 MB DDR DVI AGP
already

Videocard is the bottleneck here.

 

[Roger Hamlett]

forgot to mention that he is using a GEFORCE 4 MX 440 128 MB DDR DVI AGP
already

That is not a fast card for games.
I'm sorry to say, you will see a much larger gain from a really good video
card.

Best Wishes

 

[NT Canuck]

forgot to mention that he is using a GEFORCE 4 MX 440 128 MB
DDR DVI AGP already

clue...

video graphics and computing movement on display in gaming mode
is ALL done on the video card cpu these days...and on the video card
ram (which is high speed ddr...where it is needed more).

A TI-4200 (or better) w/128mb of ddr ram on video card will be a
giant leap, or an ATI 9600pro w/128mb of ddr on card is the ticket.

either one (ati is my personal preferrence...had both) will serve you
well upto 2.8ghz cpu with new processors after which the video
card would be bottleneck again. mx440 is slowpoke card and
increasing cpu or going to ddr ram will do nothing for gaming fps.

you could look into newer fx series video cards if you wish to
stick with nvidea...but first google (search reviews/posts) on
reports of the fx series with similar hardware and game as they
don't always work in reality as price on the shelf. ;-)

ATI-9500/9600 or higher is full hardware (video card) support
for DX9 type games and features...if that is immediate concern.

TI-4200/4600 are DX8 cards but will play most DX9 (newer) games.
ATI-8500 (discontinued) was also a decent speed but DX8.
(caution...many cards are not alway as fast as they sound...read reviews)

There's quite a few assorted reviews/benchmarks you can ponder at:
http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/index.html
http://www17.tomshardware.com/game/index.html
http://www12.tomshardware.com/Tdb/graphic_us.html

athlon xp 2700 w/ddr and athlon 1000 w/sdr tested on new video cards..
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/index.html

hth

 

[Sick Willie]

Hello,
need your help / experience.
My son is using an Athlon XP2000+ on a A7A266 board with 512 MB SD-RAM
under WinXP.
He always complains about more speed for his games.
On the A7A266 he can use SD-RAM or DDR-RAM.
How much more performance can he expect using DDR-RAM ?
Should I give it a try and replace it ?
Thanks,
Berthold

Odds are very good that using that nVidia card with any modern nVidia
driver, on the A7A, you will find that AGP acceleration has been disabled.
You can check this out by starting dxdiag and looking at the information
found on the video page. Nvidia has stated that the ALi chipset used on the
A7A is unstable with AGP acceleration enabled and therefore their drivers
disable it by default. There is a work around available on ALi's website.

As stated here, the video card you have now is a bottleneck. Having AGP
acceleration would surely help. And even if you upgrade to a better board,
if it is nVidia based, you would still have the same problem, with the same
fix.

As far as SDRAM vs. DDR SDRAM, there would be virtually no difference on the
A7A.

Sick Willie