My Dilemma

[MJCfromCT]

Hi all,

I am getting ready to upgrade my machine, and have come to a bit of a fork in the road.

My current specs are in my sig. My original intent was to upgrade to a high end s939 dual core system. I've got 4x512 sticks of PC3200 that I could use, which would save me a ton on the final price. However, I learned that using 4x512 is a no-no, as you can only run at DDR333 and will have to run the 2T setting.

The cost of RAM is the only thing preventing me from going to a Conroe system. If I was forced to buy DDR2-800 RAM, I'd just as soon get a E6600 (whenever they come out) rather than a AM2 X2 4600+. However, going to Conroe, and buying a new mobo, vid card, PSU, and RAM all at once is going to be quite a squeeze on my wallet, considering I just got dual 2007WFPs...

So here was my idea:

If I really should go with Conroe, I could get the E6600 for ~300 when it comes out, get the Asrock VSTA motherboard for 60 bucks, x1900xt for ~370, and a PSU for around 100 bucks. I could pair all of that with 1GB of my current PC3200 RAM. I'd end up with a Conroe system running DDR1 RAM, and a graphics card running only at 4x PCIE.

Now, does this sound like a reasonable thing to do? Looking at benchmarks, it seems that the difference between 4x and 16x PCIE only really shows up in synthetic benchmarks. Gaming performance seems only to vary a few percentage points. I am concerned about only running 1GB of RAM on a system like this, though. Games like BF2 and GRAW, for example, I would think require >1GB to run smoothly, even with a Conroe chip and a x1900xt.

If I did go to the Asrock board, it would only be temporary, until xmas rolls around, at which point I could spring for the 2GB DDR2-800 and a quality mobo (maybe when the nvidia or ati chipsets for conroe come out).

What do you all think? What would you do if you were in my shoes? TIA...

[BipolarBill]

Let me short-circuit this whole thing - you do *not* have to use DDR333 on an X2 system and pretty much all DDR RAM runs at 2T standard. It's 1T that's trouble.

You can use any kind of DDR you want in an X2 system.

I'm faced with a similar upgrade path, but I'll be darned if I'm going to buy a Conroe, a new motherboard, new RAM *and* a PCIe video card. That's insane. My current PC does everything I ask of it and I'm not in that big of a hurry that I should spend $800+ to make it faster.

[MJCfromCT]

Hi, Bipolarbill,

Yes, I realize that I can put the PC3200 RAM in the board and it'll work, just at DDR333 speeds. What my big concern is regarding the performance hit I would take by having the RAM running at 333 instead of 400.

Which brings up another area I'm not too informed on...if I had 4x512, running at DDR333, the CPU can still run at its 200mhz FSB setting, correct? This would involve the use of some sort of divider in the BIOS?

I guess my only concern regarding running the RAM at 333 instead of 400 is whatever performance hit I'll get. Real-world, I could care less if some synthetic benchmark spits out a lower number. I'll be using this as a photoshop and gaming rig, so if it means i'll get a 20% lower framerate, or photoshop filters will take 20% longer to run, that wouldn't be so good.

[BipolarBill]

There is no performance hit. You can set the RAM to 166MHz (DDR333) and then overclock the FSB to 230 or so and the RAM will then run at 200MHz.

You have to understand that AMD CPUs have the memory controller onboard. There are 3 factors:

1. FSB
2. RAM speed
3. HTT (Hypertransport)

I set the second two to artifically low (20% or so) speeds and then pump up the FSB so that overclocking doesn't strain the RAM. It's the best method.

[Rugor]

It's like my X2 3800+, I dropped the RAM back to DDR333-- then OC'd the CPU from 2.0GHz to 2.4GHz and wham!-- the RAM is back in spec at DDR400.

Also, don't worry about the 4 sticks issue. The most recent revisions of the K8 core removed the limitation that you could only run DDR333 when all slots were full. The revised controller that came in with Venice and later cores can run all four slots at full speed anyway.

[MJCfromCT]

Thanks, guys...

I just ordered a s939 X2 4600+, and an Asus A8n-E motherboard.