NEW CHEAP BUILT memory question and recommendation

[mike890]

my mom's old computer recently broke down and i want to build a new amd x2 system on a budget.

i already have harddrive, case, and monitor cd drives.

here is what i want to get.

antec SP-350SmartPower 2.0 ATX 2.0 350W Power Supply $49.56
ASRock AM2NF6G-VSTA nForce 6100 $69.99
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual-Core 512K Per Core 90nm $153.99
1GB DDR2 (800) PC2-6400 OCZ Gold XTC $105.50

total 380.04+shipping

these items are from monarch and i'm wondering if i really need pc2-6400 ram would performance be fine with pc2-4200.

please post any comments and recommendations.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Anandtech's last test of memory performance with AM2 showed that performance of DDR2-533 (PC4200) was about equal to the performance of DDR-400 on Socket 939. Using PC4200 memory isn't going to be dreadful performance by any stretch.

You can save a little bit of money by going with DDR2-667. Quality 667 modules are 20 bucks less than 800, and performance differences are much less than the difference between 800 and 533. In fact DDR2-533 is in many cases more expensive than 667.

Performance will be a lot better if you use 2 memory modules though, and cost for 2x512MB is pretty much the same, if not slightly cheaper, than one larger module.

I'd also say go with a single-core CPU, unless you know your mother is doing stuff where she'd benefit from dual-core. I expect that she's probably not doing much where even using a higher speed single-core would make any difference over the slowest single-core, if she's like most parents with PCs. The A64 3800+ has a 2.4GHz core (2GHz on the X2 3800+) but it's only 108 dollars at Newegg. The 2GHz 3200+ is only 89 dollars.

You could also consider a slightly cheaper power supply. Fortron is a known good, reliable brand, the PSUs just aren't very pretty. I have that one right now, it's running my X2 4200+ and 7600GT system just fine. The only negatives to it are the cables are kind of short, but not so short they'd not reach in nearly every system, they just would be hard to do a lot of cable management with, and there's only 1 floppy connector and no PCI-Express connectors if you were ever to upgrade the video.

People on the forums have been complaining about Antec quality not being so hot these days, I don't know myself.

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: mike890
my mom's old computer recently broke down and i want to build a new amd x2 system on a budget...i'm wondering if i really need pc2-6400 ram would performance be fine with pc2-4200.

Are you sure you're not building too much computer for your mom? Is she the type of user that could probably get by with say a Sempron and 1GB of PC3200?

 

[Trey22]

Originally posted by: sm8000

Originally posted by: mike890
my mom's old computer recently broke down and i want to build a new amd x2 system on a budget...i'm wondering if i really need pc2-6400 ram would performance be fine with pc2-4200.

Are you sure you're not building too much computer for your mom? Is she the type of user that could probably get by with say a Sempron and 1GB of PC3200?

True... that's about $120 worth of savings right there.