Athlon 64 system: PC3200 @2-2-2 or PC3500 @2-3-3?
 

To flesh out the subject a bit: I'm going to be putting together an
Athlon 64 3500+ system soon. If there's one thing I am not entirely
clear on, it's which ram I should get.

My current understanding is that an Athlon 64-based system can't
really make use of the extra speed PC3500 (or higher) ram offers
over PC3200, unless one overclocks things, which I do plan to take
a stab at, though I won't be going to any extremes.

I could get my hands on either some PC3200 at timings of 2-2-2-5,
or PC3500 with slightly worse timings, 2-3-3 being typical. But
I frequently see complete Athlon 64 systems being sold with PC4000
(or faster!) ram, and I simply have to wonder if there's a major
gap in my education about how that platform works. Far as I can
tell, ram that fast doesn't come with timings as low as 2-2-2.
Since the Athlon 64 isn't supposed to be able to take advantage
of anything exceeding DDR400, it _seems_ to me that the best
route is to simply get some PC3200 with the best possible timings.
But, again, this could be completely wrong.

Hopefully the knowledgable folks here know the answer. Thanks for
any help!

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 17:41:16 -0700, Marc Brown wrote:

To flesh out the subject a bit: I'm going to be putting together an
Athlon 64 3500+ system soon. If there's one thing I am not entirely
clear on, it's which ram I should get.

My current understanding is that an Athlon 64-based system can't
really make use of the extra speed PC3500 (or higher) ram offers
over PC3200, unless one overclocks things, which I do plan to take
a stab at, though I won't be going to any extremes.

I could get my hands on either some PC3200 at timings of 2-2-2-5,
or PC3500 with slightly worse timings, 2-3-3 being typical. But
I frequently see complete Athlon 64 systems being sold with PC4000
(or faster!) ram, and I simply have to wonder if there's a major
gap in my education about how that platform works. Far as I can
tell, ram that fast doesn't come with timings as low as 2-2-2.
Since the Athlon 64 isn't supposed to be able to take advantage
of anything exceeding DDR400, it _seems_ to me that the best
route is to simply get some PC3200 with the best possible timings.
But, again, this could be completely wrong.

Hopefully the knowledgable folks here know the answer. Thanks for
any help!

You're right. Get PC3200 RAM, the Athlon 64 can't use speed grades above
that. The most important thing is that you go with a quality vendor, I
usually use Crucial. Reliability is far more important than tiny
performance differences.