DDR2-675Mhz vs. DDR2-667Mhz
 

This is the situation:

I bought an ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard and supports DDR2 667/533 RAM and I'm a little confused on a subject involving the RAM speeds.


For now, my two RAM choices are:

Kingston Hyper-X DDR2-675Mhz 2Gig (2x 1Gig Dual Channel Sticks)
Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667Mhz 2Gig (2x 1Gig Dual Channel Sticks)


I'm unsure if the Kingston RAM will work with the motherboard, though there is the capability to overclock on the motherboard. My preferred choice would be the Kingston if it could work but if anyone knows if it won't work then I'll go for the Crucial.


Also, the price for both are roughly the same so there is no question about cost in the end of the problem. I would just like to know if it is possible to put this Kingston RAM into this motherboard or not. I will be purchasing two sets of one of the above choices, meaning I will have a total of 4Gigs.


Any help on this problem would be wonderful, thanks in advance.

return the board and processor and buy an Athlon 64? ^^;

667MHz and 675MHz memory sticks are both within PC2 5400 specifications, so either stick will work fine. If they both have the same latency specs, they should perform the same, too.

Though it's not your question, I'd reccomend 4x512 sticks since that'll give you better performance than 4x1gb. Especially considering it's doubtful that anything but a server box could manage more than 1gb of usage. I've rarely seen it go above 500mb, actually....

Really, more RAM increases performace far better than faster RAM, since more RAM=Less HDD pagefile usage. Just go with the one that's more stable (read reviews if you have to) really both have about an equal reputation. The issue of stability of the RAM is more important than the speed in this case (for example if one has ECC, go for that one).

People's experience with those RAM types determine's their choice here. If its just about brand, go with whatever you've had the best experience with.

I've been a fan of Crucial, so if I had to pick, I'd say that one. But yeah, more RAM > faster.

Wrong. Windows and most windows programs need the pagefile. From prior experience with high-ram systems, lowering or turning off the pagefile does not increase performance, however it does increase compatibility problems. Many programs, such as Photoshop, refuse to run unless there is a significant page file.

And you guys forget, programs would have to be coded to take advantage of 4gb of ram. And that's ridiculous. There's absolutely no reason to store that much information in RAM, not even for video editing. 2GB is enough for HDTV in video editing, jeez.

We're going for 2GB here, I thought? As long as the mobo supports it, it should be fine, no?

Here is the information on both brands:

Kingston Hyper-X DDR2-675Mhz (PC2-5400) 2Gig (2x 1Gig Dual Channel Sticks)
Latency: 4-4-4-10-1
Voltage: 1.85V
Web Reference: Kingston UK

Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667Mhz (PC2-5300) 2Gig (2x 1Gig Dual Channel Sticks)
Latency: 4-4-4-10
Voltage: 1.9V
Web Reference: Crucial UK

The latencies are the same, but the Kingston has an extra fifth digit that handles the Command Rate.


The amount of RAM to be purchased will be 4Gigs in total which means two orders will be placed, sorry if what I said was in any way misleading.


Thank you all for your comments, I've enjoyed using Kingston RAM in the past and unless anyone else knows that this type of RAM is not compatible with the P5N32-SLI motherboard, I will place the orders at the beginning of next week.

I noticed that Kingston only recommends running up to 2GB of memory at 667MHz speeds on the Intel chipset. If you want to use more memory than that, they recommend using 533MHz modules instead. ASUS and nVidia don't mention that limit anywhere on their websites, though, so Kingston's website might be wrong. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to buy the memory from newegg or another site with lenient return procedures, though.

ASUS also recommends running the 64-bit version of Windows XP if you want to use more than 3GB of memory, so if you aren't running it, you'll probably want to upgrade to that as well.

Um, some boards don't support ECC.

I didn't say to lower the page page size, but that having more physical RAM wouldn't force to use the page file as often as it does with less RAM. Less page file usage means the RAM isn't constrained by the very slow speeds of the hard drive.

My motherboard is a piece of low-budget crap from 2001 and it supports ECC.

Your motherboard might work (as in, not crash or refuse to start) with ECC memory installed, but it doesn't actually do anything except on server boards. Unless you're using a server motherboard, ECC is a bit of a waste of money.

After looking over some of the websites a bit more, I found the following information:



After reading both thoroughly, I came to the conclusion that if I do purchase enough RAM to make 4Gigs, in theory, about 3Gigs would be left since there will be dual graphics cards present on the motherboard.


4Gig System Memory Support
Web Reference: Intel White Papers (Acrobat Reader Required)