What RAM to buy?

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Horatio · Post by **Horatio** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:17 pm

I have a Gigabyte GA-K8VNXP w/ bios f7. Although because the DDR memory controller is on my processor, a 3000+ AMD64 w/ 512k cache, does my motherboard make a difference? I had bought a k-byte 512MB stick of 2700 ddr from a local store. It ran fine w/ a 256MB stick of pny 2100 ddr, but alone my machine would eventually crash. I don't know what chips where on that k-byte because the heat spreader was rived on, and I have already returned it. I now have a 512MB stick of ddr 2700 kingston value ram part num. KVR333/512R. The chips on the kingsion are an infineon HYB25D256800CE-5. The Kingston value ram has run w/o a crash for about six days, and current uptime is 1 day 5 min.

My question is what memory shouuld I buy? I believe I want 2 ddr 3200 sticks.

Looking at www.newegg.com, I found some sticks made by Rosewill, and if you look at the picture you can see the chips are made by samsung. Althouth I can't find that chip number at http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Tec ... 93,00.html (the side links at the right). Anyone have any experience or thoughts on the rosewill sticks? I was also considering from www.newegg.com,
Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 - OEM and OCZ Enhanced Latency Serices 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 - Retail. What might I expect from each of these sticks? Most important is the memory stable, and then is its performance worth the price?

cvig · Post by **cvig** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:08 pm

I have an Asus K8V SE Deluxe and it is very picky about memory. Does your motherboard manufacturer have a list of approved modules? Normally, that information is bogus but in this case (with the AMD 64) I believe it is valid information although always slightly outdated.

I brought 2 x 512MB PC3200 Mushkin Simple Green sticks from NewEgg and had a ton of problems. Turns out one stick is bad. Now I have in the computer 1 x 512MB PC3200 Hynix and 1 x 512MB PC3200 Mushkin. Works great. My DDR voltage is at 2.6v (instead of stock 2.5v?) but I'm going to bump that back down today and check everything.

The #1 thing you have to do is set your memory settings manually if the automatic doesn't work. If you still have problems, you can try bumping up the DDR voltage.

But if you're motherboard manufacturer doesn't say anything about DDR compatiblity, I'd just buy whatever RAM you want at the price level you are comfortable with. I personally don't see any sense in paying more fore CAS 2 over CAS 3 when the performance difference appears to be extremely small.

malloc · Post by **malloc** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:22 pm

If you're talking brands...
Corsair, Geil, OCZ, Kingston...By that order.

crazycat · Post by **crazycat** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:45 pm

I would suggest testing it before somehow because i have 1 gb twinmos cl2.5 brand memory and could not get it to work on 400 mhz only at 333. But gigabyte is famous here for poor memory compatibility. Chech this out.

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard ... index.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard ... ll_all.gif
your board is second from below, i would suggest to never buy gigabyte anymore.

Horatio · Post by **Horatio** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 7:48 pm

I've gone to my Manufactures support page for my motherboard, http://us.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Pro ... 8VNXP.htm#, no list the last time I checked, and no list of supported ram sticks today.
Thanks for the help so far.

get sirius · Post by **get sirius** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:06 pm

I have been using Corsair's ultra-low-latency PC3200 TwinX modules (both registered and unbuffered) for several years now with very good luck on Asus, MSI, Epox, and Tyan motherboards and both x86 as well as x86_64 cpus. Terrific performance and terrific reliability. I cannot recommend them too highly!

Ypsilon · Post by **Ypsilon** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:43 pm

Yes, Corsair RAM is great.

I have 1 Gig of PC3200 TwinX over here, too and I am just happy with it.

If you want to spend the money, buy Corsair TwinX modules. They're tested, have life-long warranty and are quite the fastest you can get.

Horatio · Post by **Horatio** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 5:38 am

I decided to buy 2 sticks of Rosewill. Currently my uptime is :

Code: Select all

 01:20:57 up 3 days, 23:01,  9 users,  load average: 0.02, 0.02, 0.00

and counting...
the chips on them read :

Code: Select all

Rosewill IDUT8S8NB2AM-5

and the sticker on them read :

Code: Select all

512M pc-3200 RW4001512 0435

The price was right in buget, $144 w/ ship+handling. I Don't know how to determine the CAS the memory is really running on my machine, but the memory controller is on the amd64 processor die. So it should work on yours.

g0su · Post by **g0su** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 12:28 pm

Hello.

1ºOCZ PC3700 BE

2ºCorsair PC3500 2-3-2

3ºBH5 "oem"

Bye

Tsonn · Post by **Tsonn** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 1:01 pm

Hmm. Uptime isn't a very good measure of memory reliability... you could have had a number of memory faults without it bringing the system down. Memtest is your friend

Incidentally, when I first got my system... A8V Deluxe motherboard, two 512Mb sticks of Crucial 3200... I found it was very unreliable. Turned out one of the sticks couldn't cope with DDR400. I decided to test the performance difference when running at DDR333 before getting a replacement... I used 3DMark under windows and the highest score was 1024Mb at DDR333, followed by 512Mb at DDR333, with the lowest being 512Mb at DDR400.

I'm not entirely sure why that was... does DDR400 improve memory bandwidth at the cost of higher latency? Or vice versa?

But, either way, I stuck with DDR333 and all is good.

Flying_Horse · Post by **Flying_Horse** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 1:41 pm

I bought a brandnew ASUS A8V with an AMD64 3400 and 2x512MB Kingston 3200 ValueRAM (recomended by ASUS). I got big problems even booting the live cd. After installing one 256-333 memory stick all was fine. Yesterday I bought two 512MB sticks from Corsair (TWINX1024-3200XL) and my machine runs much faster and had no kernel panic until now. Quite expensive but worth it

Cheers, Klaus

g0su · Post by **g0su** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 3:24 pm

MMM corsair, ocz, geil, kigstom etc etc is the name of the mount(i think than the really word is manufacter, is posible?) company. But the important are the chips.

Is the chip is BH5, BH6 etc etc don't matter the company, corsair, ocz, kigstom, a-data... the important is the chip of memory.

Bh5 for amd64 is a good idea if u don't OC. cas 2-2-2-11 200

For OC a-data vitesta pc4000 with hynx is a good idea: 2'5-3-3-11 250/260.

Bye!

Spear · Post by **Spear** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 4:13 pm

I'm running a Gigabyte K8NNXP, basically the same board but with an nForce chipset. I've got CorsairXMS3200 CAS 2 in it running rock solid at 440MHz. Don't go cheap on the memory it will come back to bite you.

Kow · Post by **Kow** » Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:36 am

My Samsung PC3200 400mhz 512mb sticks seem to be doing just fine. Samsung is probably not at the top of the list, but they are up there.

yottabit · Post by **yottabit** » Fri May 06, 2005 1:11 am

My preference as a commerical workstation & server builder who only sells AMD:

* Corsair (almost all use SEC/Samsung memory, and occaisonally MT/Micron)
* SEC/Samsung
* MT/Micron
* Infineon
* Toshiba

Don't waste your money with anything else.

And of course don't forget than whenever you build a new system, or upgrade motherboard/CPU/memory you should *always* run MemTest86+ off the LiveCD. Let it run at least 5-10 passes, if not overnight, and save yourself a TON of headaches later by knowing your memory and northbridge are at least stable.

Cheers!

J

Psykk · Post by **Psykk** » Fri May 06, 2005 4:55 am

I'd personally suggest Corsairs or Kingstons, with OCZ close behind.

scharkalvin · Post by **scharkalvin** » Fri May 06, 2005 3:13 pm

I'll put a plug in for Crucial. They used to be a Gentoo sponser, don't know why they
dropped off the website. Still their prices are OK, and I havn't had any problems
with their parts.

Lucky B · Post by **Lucky B** » Sat May 07, 2005 1:14 am

thread necromancy rox my sox.

Corsair el-cheapo dual-channel 1GB kit x 2 here.

paulisdead · Post by **paulisdead** » Sat May 07, 2005 3:51 am

I've had great luck with my OCZ platinum rev2, but it's pricey stuff. I've found the Corsair XMS to be less compatible than the OCZ with certain A64 mobos, but it worked fine in others, despite the fact that the corsair XMS and OCZ rev2 use the same samsung TCCD chips. I don't know about your current board, but the gigabyte k8ns pro, and k8ns ultra had some issues with the XMS. The Pro wouldn't even run at default clocks and latencies, the ultra just wouldn't overclock well with the XMS. They might have been able to fix that with a bios update. From what I've heard, Corsair used a less compatible PCB on their more recent XMS, so that could be the cause of the problems on some boards.

The OCZ rev2 has been great for me, I run it at 530DDR 2.5-3-3-10. It is pricey stuff, but fantastic. Their revision 1 stuff has been just as compatible, but less overclockable, and I've seen it for as low as $150 for a 1GB pack of the stuff at 2-3-2-5 ddr400.

AlchEmysT · Post by **AlchEmysT** » Tue May 10, 2005 6:19 am

I bought a brandnew ASUS A8V with an AMD64 3400 and 2x512MB Kingston 3200 ValueRAM (recomended by ASUS).

I have the exact same thing .. if we bought them at the same store (Extreme Gear) i'll be freaked out ...

but i haven't had ANY problems with the Kingston ram at all. I even set the CL to 2.5 and still running solid and fast.

i've built many computers and bought many different ram modules by lots of manufacturers. Kingston for it's price and reliability is my numero uno now.

souln0thing · Post by **souln0thing** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:56 pm

I havent bought too many name brand ram chips, just one for my current system. Which is a corsair xms 512mb at pc3200(beleive thats the right number) from newegg, and im pretty impressed, runs under 90 for 512mb. So i would say corsair

Aynjell · Post by **Aynjell** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:40 pm

I've two sticks of DDR400 ValueRAM with a cas latency of 3 (well 3, but the 3rd slows the rig down). Oddly enough, when I had windows, my benchmarking showed the stick with the CL of 3 was faster than the other stick of valueRAM with a CL of 2.5. Well, I take that back:

The score WAS in favour of the 2.5, but the graphics were better wth the CL of 3. They were smoother and cleaner, and it WAS a noticible difference. This is with a 3200 with a 512 KB cache and a GeForce 6800. Product matching is never perfect unfortunately... Many times some things work better for no reason.

msalerno · Post by **msalerno** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:52 pm

I always go with Crucial. I use it in all of my servers and workstations, never had a problem.

If anyone ever asks me where to get memory, I just point them here: http://www.crucial.com

Check out:

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts. ... &submit=Go

dezydery · Post by **dezydery** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:26 pm

msalerno wrote:If anyone ever asks me where to get memory, I just point them here: http://www.crucial.com

...and I normally point them here: http://www.crucial.com/uk - for reasons that should be self-explanatory.

Great site, makes it easy to find the right RAM, great prices and I've never had a problem yet.

yottabit · Post by **yottabit** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:13 am

I believed in and exclusively bought MicronTech (Crucial) for many many years of EDO memory. I didn't find their SDRAM in the beginning to be of the same quality as their EDO. It almost always worked, but just didn't have that special something I was used to with their EDO product. That's when I started using Samsung and Infineon and a few others.

Since then I have almost exclusively used Corsair which usually is memory from Samsung, but is also occasionally memory from MicronTech (Crucial) or Infineon. I've been extremely happy with the value and performance provided by Corsair memory.

For my last personal build my distributor was backordered on Corsair memory (I was told Corsair had a backorder on the Samsung chips) so I went with the equivalent part from OCZ which is also Samsung. I've been happy with the OCZ as well. In the future I may compare OCZ & Corsair prices and pick whichever provides the best value.

J