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That pricewatch ram is probably crap stuff. Good ram like crucial is about the same price(between ddr and sdr for crucial). >>
The low end PC133 RAM is high density which will cause
CTSPD to go "WTF is that?" But though it won't handle CAS 2, the 3 pieces of high density RAM I've played with seemed stable at 133/CAS-3 and some folks push the high density memory up to 143-150 MHz without incident. I have 2 sticks of Crucial CAS 2 as well as other decent RAM (Mushkin, Excelerate), but I have to say that though the good (and expensive) memory will run faster at more aggressive timings, I don't notice that it is more reliable than the glop (Zeus, high density) if you don't push the junk beyond its rated capacity. Moreover, I think even high quality PC133 still has a small price advantage over PC2100. PowerUp, for instance, which gets high resellersratings, sells 256 MB of CAS 2 Micron for $43. And of course PC133 is still MUCH cheaper if you want 512+ MB sticks.
And sometimes size matters, no matter what they say. For Win9X I prefer smaller increments of fast high quality, because it won't really take advantage of much more than 128 MB. But for a pre-emptive OS, like W2K or Linux I'd rather have large smelly heaps of RAM, even if it is 10% slower than CAS 2. Even slow RAM is faster than swapping on to your hard drive.
I'm not saying that DDR isn't a superior technology, only that I'd appreciate it if someone could steer me towards a site that tells me exactly HOW much faster DDR rigs are running various real world apps.
At this particular moment I think I'd still steer the budget conscious towards a KT133 solution for a general purpose machine. For instance, Fry's is hawking a FIC KT133 board and a Duron 750 for $79. Combine that with a stick of cheap but decent PC133 (I just ordered 3 256MB sticks of low density CAS 3 from Dell for $101 delivered) and maybe a Maxtor 5400 RPM 30 gig ($59 after $20 MIR at CompUSA this Sunday)...oh wait, this isn't the Hot Deals Forum.