Single sided 512MB DDR400 PC3200 suggestions needed.

[Vishruth]

I'm planning to get an AMD Athlon64 4000+ San Diego core processor soon (monarchcomputer.com has it scheduled to start shipping from May 2nd). After quite a bit of reading all across the web, I gathered this, among other things:

Venice/San Diego CPUs will run single sided 512x4 DDR400 PC3200 RAM modules in dual channel mode without a hitch, but they can only run double sided 512x4 DDR400 PC3200 RAM modules in 2T timing.

So I'm looking for recommendations on what single sided 512x4 DDR400 RAM modules I should buy. I prefer Cosair and it'd be great if your recommended modules are available from newegg.com. It's a pity that Newegg's descriptions don't say much about whether a particular RAM module available on their store is single sided or double sided. And I don't mind shelling out a couple of extra bucks for CAS Latency 2 if that's going to help improve my system's performance any (and no, I don't plan on overclocking the memory at all and I may do a little CPU over clocking). Oh well...

I would also appreciate if you could come up with suggestions for these:

What Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI card would you recommend for gaming and movie viewing?

What nforce4 mobo would you recommend for this setup? I don't plan on putting up an SLI set-up right away. (Silence and Linux compatibilities are high on my priorities list).

Currently, I was thinking about getting CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER Limited Edition 70SB035000013 8 (7.1) Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card and MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard to go along with the 4000+ processor.

I can figure out about the soundcard and the mobo, but I'd really appreciate it if I could get some help with the RAM issue.

Thanks,
Vishruth.

 

[dguy6789]

It has been proven that the difference between 1T timing and 2T timing is less than anything that was recently being stated. The difference between them is no greater than 2 2 2 2 5 timings and 2 2 2 3 5. Dont purchase more expensive ram because you are afraid of running 2T.


The myth of 2T timing killing performance has been cleared up.

 

[Vishruth]

I went through THIS THREAD earlier today. But I still wanted to be sure because I don't know what difference in price I'll see if I were to go for 512x4 DDR400 single sided modules instead of regular dual sided ones.

Btw, is it worth moving up from my 512x4 DDR400 CAS Latency 3 (Hynix modules) to these Corsair CAS Latency 2 modules in a 512x4 configuration?

Thanks for the quick reply, btw.

EDIT: Check this article. Here's an excerpt:

The Halo scores in particular are worth pointing out. Our P4 system gains over 4% going from CAS 3.0 to 2.5, and over 10% going to 2.0. The Athlon 64 does even better, earning 7.5% moving from CAS 3.0 to 2.5 and 13.6% going to 2.0. In both cases, that's an absolutely enormous speed increase, but we were able to verify it with repeated testing. Something about the way Halo is coded makes it highly sensitive to RAM latency, and we wouldn't be surprised if there were other games out there with similar properties.

The improvement in Halo is impressive. I wonder how much truth there is to that claim in real world performance...

 

[Leper Messiah]

those are most likely double sided, for that price.

 

[dguy6789]

Vishruth, I honestly would not worry about it. I have ran 4 double sided sticks of 512 ddr in athlon 64 systems and still got the same 3dmark05 score, and game scores as I did with 1 512 stick. The thread you have read will show you that the difference between 1T and 2T timing is less than the difference between memory at 333mhz and 400mhz.

 

[Concillian]

VERY few 512MB sticks are single sided. The higher density RAM currently performs worse and is slightly more expensive than the lower density RAM.

You should be choosing between 2x 1GB sticks (higher latency but 1T CMD rate) and 4x512MB Double sided for better latency but the 2T cmd rate.

I doubt there is a terribly significant difference between the two, but I have not seen data either way.

 

[dguy6789]

For anybody who wants to know the truth about 1T vs 2T timing, read this thread.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1577496&enterthread=y

 

[Vishruth]

Thanks for the help folks. I'll stick with my present 512x4 DDR400 PC3200 CAS3 modules for now and see how they work out with the new rig I'm putting together.

 

[Vishruth]

Look what I just found - single sided 512MB DDR400 modules from Crucial! for $46.55 @ newegg.com (another single sided Crucial 512MB DDR400 module here - though slightly more expensive: $59 @ newegg.com).

It doesn't say anywhere in the newegg links that these are single sided modules. But one fellow named prvbulls actually mailed Crucial to ask if these modules listed at newegg were single sided or not, and received this in reply from Crucial:

Thank you for your email. The two parts that you are referencing are identical parts. Newegg has just listed the extension with the part that shows it has eight chips and is single sided. We currently offer the same exact memory. If you place your order via the website you will receive a single sided module. Have a great day.

And according to anandtech.com's review of these modules, they should be able to run fine at CAS Latency 2.5 as against the default 3.

I think this is an excellent deal and I'm ready to go for four of these. What are your opinions on this? Please share your views on this.