Im building a new rig from the ground up and i had a few questions specifically concerning memory and cpus. First question i have, is that is PC3500 RAM all that much better than PC3200 RAM with the exact same timings. Is it worth the extra $100. The two modules im looking at are: Corsair TWINX Dual Channel 2048MB PC3500 DDR 433MHz Memory (2x1024MB) TWINX2048-3500LLPRO in Canada at TigerDirect.ca (2-3-2-5 @ 400 MHz) or OCZ EL Platinum Dual Channel 2048MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB) OCZ4002048ELDCPEK in Canada at TigerDirect.ca (2-3-2-6 @ 433 MHz) The next question i had is how much difference would twice the L2 cache make on performance. Im trying to decide between the AMD X2 4600+ or the 4800+ --same cores, just more L2 on the 4800. Is this worth the extra $100 or so? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------- Asus A8N 32-SLI Deluxe XFX GeForce 7900 GT 520M Xtreme 256 MB 320 GB Seagate Baracuda SATA-II Ultra X-Finity 500W PSU -------------------------------------------------
First of all the links are mismatched with the wrong timing descriptions below them - PC3500 is 433mhz and PC3200 is 400mhz. Second, with the new Conroe procs out, no one should be looking at AMD. As stated before, Conroe's lowest line (E6300/E6400) overclock to about the same and in some cases better than the AMD 64b FX-62. But to answer your question, the price increase has a lot to do with the size of the memory. I imagine the gap wouldnt be as larger for a 512MB stick as for a 1GB stick and in this case there are (2) 1GB sticks. Second, PC3500 is not as available as PC3200 because most motherboards are not designed to handle PC3500 w/o overclocking. That alone could cause a larger price margin, due to the economics involved (less supply/demand). Third, you should check the memory timings of other 433Mhz sticks. It could be that the extra 33Mhz would cause more latencies and therefore the PC3500 is good for its class. Finally, while we're talking about being good for its kind, it could be that the OCZ overclocks really well (that is what they're known for afterall). In my opinion, save the $100. You can probably OC the PC3200 to 433MHz or close to it. Really, you should be thinking of saving your money for the Conroe line - you're going to need a new mobo and ddr2 ram for that. And if not Conroe, in late 2007/early 2008 Intel will be releasing a 45nano-meter designed chip. Think about that. They just went from 90 to 65 and the 65 is already so much better, now they're going to take the 65 to 45.
