2GB RAM, or 1GB expensive stuff?

[therealnerd2]

Simple question.

Should I get 2GB of OCUK value (or equivalent) - i.e. cheap stuff, and keep it as DDR400

Or 1GB of decent stuff and clock it highly.

I'm thinking of spending roughly the same for both options.

Mainly I want my PC to be stable and quick at multitasking windows apps, with maybe a bit of gaming and encoding.

This is Opteron 144 + 9NPAJ by the way.

Thanks!

 

[lemonkettaz]

if its just a bit of gaming and mainly multi tasking... id personally go with the 2gb pc3200 ram

geil value would be your best bet.

if it was gaming mostly then 1gb of faster ram would probably be better.

 

[kbc]

I think for the tasks you want to perform, you'd benefit with the 2GB rather than 1GB of clocked RAM.

Go with what Lemon suggested. Geil Value or something as opposed to expensive 1GB.. more RAM is always better.

 

[lemonkettaz]

aye, geil value is great. will be perfect for what you want from it

 

[HangTime]

I'd go for 2gig personally. The performance difference between 'fast' and 'slow' DDR isn't really that great on the A64 platform. Sure with fancy timings and a slightly higher FSB you can gain maybe 10% performance, but most of the time you are bottlenecked by gpu/cpu speed. Whereas there is a real gain from having >1gig ram in cases where you would be paging to swapfile. Games like BF2, WoW, FEAR and FC can all benefit from 2gig memory when playing on high settings.

Hardcore benchmarkers excluded, memory isn't really an area where spending a lot is cost effective. Spending an extra £60 on a graphics card will usually make a lot more difference than an extra £60 on RAM (ie a £210 graphics card paired with £150 RAM will be faster in games than a £150 graphics card paired with £210 RAM).

 

[therealnerd2]

Thanks for all the help! 2GB it is then!