RAM question

[Andi]

Hi guys,

it has been a while since you last time heard from me...

i am thinking about upgrading my pc the last time before buying a new one and considering about one extra gig of ram.

i used a tool called cpu-z to read out the data of my cpu, board and ram.
the following is built in:

athlon xp3000+ fsb 400 MHz
RAM 1: DDR PC2700, 166 MHz, CL2.5, 512 MB (old one from before cpu and ram upgrade)
RAM 2: DDR PC3200, 200 MHz, CL3, 512 MB

Is it correct that with this setup, my complete ram will run only with 166 mhz? and if so, does this also affect the frequency of the cpu or is that one independent from the memory?

when i buy an new ram it would be 1 GB DDR PC3200, 200Mhz, CL3, correct? CL 2 or 2.5 wouldn't make sense, would it?

the overall performance would be better if i removed the old 166 mhz bar to have only 1.5 GB after that but instead 200 MHz. correct me, if i am wrong.

i thought about buying this one:
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/de ... hData=true

[.Sup]

Hi guys,

it has been a while since you last time heard from me...

i am thinking about upgrading my pc the last time before buying a new one and considering about one extra gig of ram.

i used a tool called cpu-z to read out the data of my cpu, board and ram.
the following is built in:

athlon xp3000+ fsb 400 MHz
RAM 1: DDR PC2700, 166 MHz, CL2.5, 512 MB (old one from before cpu and ram upgrade)
RAM 2: DDR PC3200, 200 MHz, CL3, 512 MB

Is it correct that with this setup, my complete ram will run only with 166 mhz? and if so, does this also affect the frequency of the cpu or is that one independent from the memory?

when i buy an new ram it would be 1 GB DDR PC3200, 200Mhz, CL3, correct? CL 2 or 2.5 wouldn't make sense, would it?

the overall performance would be better if i removed the old 166 mhz bar to have only 1.5 GB after that but instead 200 MHz. correct me, if i am wrong.

i thought about buying this one:
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/de ... hData=true

hey Andi
The frequency of the ram in your pc is 166 even if the PC supports 200mhz and even though u have a 200 (400) mhz bar in it.

You were talking about about CL3, C2...This is so called latency or response time of the memory. lower-> better. The best thing would be for you to buy the exact same RAMs as your 200mhz ones. So the latency would be the same.
I have the GEIL memory that ur interested and they are okay, no errors so far.
About the performance: capacity of the memory> speed. That means 2gigs of different speed will do a better performance than a 1.5 gig memory of same speed.
So my avice is: buy another 1.5 gigs of the same memory as the 200mhz's u already have in your PC and get rid of the 166mhz's.

[Ash2Dust]

Also to think about is this a short term band-aid or a long term investment? Is your aging system stable?

Last I looked (about a year ago), BF2 used about 1GB of memory. That along with Windows and anything else running you'll be approaching 1.3. Alt tab out during BF2 and check your Task Manager (Commit Charge Peak). If you are peaking 1.3GB then you'll seen no difference between 1.5 and 2.0 capacity. Check any other big games or apps to.

200MHz only sticks are preferable if you're not peaking past your RAM capacity and forcing windows to swap on the HDD.

Whats the best CPU your motherboard can use? AMD single core processors are very cheap.

[Andi]

I think i am fine with the processor so far. currently i am playing homm5, and my hdd is freaking out, while doing so. i assumed this is because of the lack of memory, so all the stuff is transfered to the page file.
Next year i am going to buy a whole new pc, so i don't intend to put much money in the old one now. i gb is the maximum i will invest at the moment.

what do the others think about it:

1.5 GB at 200 MHz or
2 GB at 166 MHz??

[Charger]

Don't buy anything for the old computer. You can put all the money into the new one.