What is better - 3 or 4 sticks of DDR2?

[silent h3ro]

Yeah you are right about the cheap 2x2GB set of memory... I might go for that after I sell my old video card and get a few dollars for it. As I was looking at memory on newegg, I ran accross DDR3 and man it is ridiculously expensive. Even if I could afford it my mobo doesn't support it so DDR2 is an even more clear choice. G.SKILL any good?

[clocker]

That's what I have.

[lynx]

The downside is that since they can't possibly be matched pairs, the timings can't be as tight as with a matched pair and they will also probably need to run in 2T mode which will slow things down slightly.

Lynx, I'm not even sure that 1T is an option for most DDR2 RAM anymore.
Or maybe it's the motherboards...certainly, none of the three different Gigabyte LGA775 boards I've used had the ability to specify between 1 or 2T.
Could be that a more feature rich board- possibly DFI?- does have this option.

You are probably right, I can't say I've looked into this recently.

My point was that it probably doesn't affect the performance sufficiently to be worth worrying about, and if these boards are already running at 2T then there's no performance hit whatsoever.

However, I agree about the 2x2GB option. That way he's got a matched pair for his new system.

[mr. nails]

G.SKILL any good?

my 2gb of crucial just shit on me (6 months life) and i bought the 4gb (2x2gb) sticks of gskill and vista has never worked better. responsive times from going in/out games back & forth to desktop no longer show any lag. or before it was 100% lag now it's maybe 5% lag if that. GREAT investment!

2x1gb of crucial 6 months ago = $200+

2x2gb of gskill now = $100+

[tesco]

What happened to your crucial ram? How did it just 'shit on you'? (both sticks?)

[silent h3ro]

G.SKILL DDR2 800 ram was $80 but with no rebate so I ended up buying OCZ Platinum DDR2 1000 ram 2x2GB sticks for $95 w/ $30 MIR (best bang for buck). Thanks for the advice everybody.

[Acid_death69]

G.SKILL DDR2 800 ram was $80 but with no rebate so I ended up buying OCZ Platinum DDR2 1000 ram 2x2GB sticks for $95 w/ $30 MIR (best bang for buck). Thanks for the advice everybody.

Ive got OCZ! but mine are silver:p and stupidly i accidently took the warranty sticker off . But never mind there good at what they do and they havent failed me yet

[silent h3ro]

It's funny how OCZ places the warranty sticker over the vents on the heatsink..kind of defeats the whole purpose. I saw OCZ memory that was silver in the center with gold around the outside of the heatsink, now that is some cool lookin memory (I think it was the Gold series DDR2 1066). Price was a bigger concern over looks though.

[neneclix]

4 > 3
4 sticks allow for dual channel, while 3 will not.

yes hes right