DDR2 Speeds and gaming

[tomsega]

Goodness me DD2 ram has got so cheap!

It seems whereas 2x1GB of the budget DDR400 RAM I own would have cost about £60 not so long ago, NOW you can get 2X1gb Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 - which runs at 800mhz (and apparently easily overclocks to 1,030mhz) - for about the same price.
Some Crucial Ballistix stuff is only £80 and apparently runs at 1.13ghz!

So.. even though the Athlon 64 I'm running is old-hat.. maybe having it push through some 1.13ghz RAM instead of 400mhz would actually give a cheaper and greater power boost than upgrading to an AM2 chip, eh?

This months CustomPC has a roundup of some of the better chips and the different between the module that clocked at 900mhz and the one that clocked at 1.22ghz was only 1 extra frame per second in FEAR.

So the different between 900mhz and 1.22 is only 1 frame, but maybe the difference between 400mhz and 1.22 would be about 4-5 frames, no? It's probably something that will affect loading times more, but a 4-5 frame improvement for £60 couldn't be bad..

Anybody know a good gaming benchmark that includes the whole spectrum of 400mhz to 1.ghz+ RAM?

 

[Alf]

dont think you can run DDR2 on your mobo. If you try putting DDR2 in it, then i belive you wont be able to boot

 

[tomsega]

Really?!
RAM is one area I know absolutely nothing about..

Damn it. Guess I'll have to upgrade afterall..

 

[GONNA-GET-U]

Supports AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64 X2/Athlon 64
A8N-SLI supports AMD 939-pin Athlon 64 FX/ Athlon 64 processors with 1MB/512KB L2 cache which is based on 64-bit architecture. It features 2000/1600 MT/s HyperTransport Bus and dual-channel un-buffered DDR400 memory support.

sorry looks like you would have to upgrade your mobo before you can use DDR2 - that why DDR2 is so cheap

 

[V_R]

DDR is 184 pin DDR2 is 240 iirc, so no it wont fit in a 939/DDR mb let alone boot.

AM2 supports DDR2 as does LGA775

You need to upgrade if you want DDR2.

 

[Alf]

I see no point with the rig you have, perhaps next year it may be more viable. but you computer wont be any faster

 

[tomsega]

Fair enough. Cheers guys.
If I had thought about it a year ago I would have known that DDR2 obviously doesn't go on this board! But I haven't thought about hardware since this baby's been up and running.

I guess for casual gamers computer knowledge can arrive in short bursts once every 2-3 years when you're upgrading your rig!
Ask me anything about Athlon64 or GeForce 7... but Intel Dual Core2? DirectX 10? What on EARTH is going on there..!?.. heh..

 

[PotGuy]

Well there is exactly NO performance difference between DDR and DDR2.

Don't upgrade just for the sake of the RAM.

 

[Me__2001]

as the others have said DDR2 won't work in your motherboard

 

[Alf]

Dont worry Tom, im a little behind the times when i comes to hardware
all i know about are 'old' AMD 939