Good update? (Athlon 64)

[Slougi]

Thinking about buying these:

MSI K8T800 PRO DUAL DDR SATA GBLAN 99€
AMD ATHLON 64 3000+ 1.8 GHZ S939 TRAY 139.7€

mobo

Currently on a Duron 1200 + ECS K7S5A (Sis 735).

I am thinking about keeping my current ram for now (1GB 266Mhz DDR). How much will that impact performance as compared to say 400Mhz ram? Also I picked a non-pcie board on purpose, as in a show of my grand stupidity I just got a geforce 6600GT agp, I was not really planning a system upgrade. But I guess the upgrade bug bit me Thoughts?

[rylan]

I am thinking about keeping my current ram for now (1GB 266Mhz DDR). How much will that impact performance as compared to say 400Mhz ram?

Substantially. In fact if the fsb and memory clock or synched or related by a multiple you won't be able to run the processor at full speed.

[G400SG16mb]

you can get a PCI-E motherboard with an AGP slot, but it won't run an AGP video card at full speed.

[DGhost]

you can get a PCI-E motherboard with an AGP slot, but it won't run an AGP video card at full speed.

oh, it runs the AGP video card at full speed. it however uses what amounts to PCI tranfers instead. works great for 2d, but 3d acceleration is hosed entirely as the PCI bus is waaaayyy too limited to handle the bandwidth requirements of a modern 3d accelerator. it is not worth it if you just got a 6600GT AGP.

also, the Athlon64 memory controller does not run in sync with anything. it is capable of handling PC1600-PC3200 memory. it will, however, limit performance. not sure how much, most people just go ahead and upgrade the ram when they do it.

[Slougi]

So this would seem like a sensical upgrade path? I mean I don't really think I'll need PCI express in the near future, and when I do I'll likely just upgrade my vidcard at the same time.

As to the RAM, anyone have any idea how much the perceived performance loss would be? I mean obviously it's going to hinder the CPU as current systems are very much memory bound already, but is it really going to be that obvious?

[Nowhere]

I'd say that in normal use (excluding games, encoding/compressing something, etc.) it's impossible to tell a difference...hdd speed and amount of ram are more important

[Umfriend]

A good way to test it would be by crunching for our MURC - CPDN team. If anything would be affected by lower speed ram, it should be that, so that might be interesting.

ducks for cover as dZeus grabs the hammer

[GNEP]

LOL@Umf...

You will see a substantial increase in performance with your proposed upgrade, but you would also see a noticable increase again if you upgraded your RAM later. Possibly 30% in certain apps going from DDR266 to DDR400.

[Marshmallowman]

Yeah go with what you picked, and upgrade the ram later on. Remember that it is dual channel, so memory bandwidth would be similar to a socket 754 at ddr 400(very crude estimate)

And if your are lucky you may be able to OC your ram to ddr 333 or ddr 400, eg back your memory timings right off.