Posted: 5/27/2008 12:31:18 PM EDT
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Which will work better (assuming either are compatible)...? 1GB of 400 MHz ( PC3200 ) 2GB of 266 MHz ( PC2100 ) FYI - this is with a P4... thanks |
Nah, DDR SDRAM. The cheap stuff. |
It depends. If your motherboard can run the PC3200 at 400 MHz, 1GB may well give you more performance than 2 GB @ 266, especially if you don't constantly have more than 5 or 6 windows open at once. But many older motherboards don't support 400 MHz RAM, and will run that RAM at slower speeds (333 or 266). It will still be compatible, but you won't get full performance from it. In that case, more RAM is definitely better. -Troy |
Rule of thumb for ram, buy the maximum spec your CPU & MB can effectivly utilize, then buy the most of it you can. If your system has a native 400mhz front side bus and you pop 266mhz ram in there, you are effectivly loosing 134mhz of total system performance for all CPU I/O.. Since the Bus speed is also linked to the CPU via a multiplier, an 800mhz Pentium 4 would lower itself to a 532mhz speed. |
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Going back to your original question, I agree that more RAM is usually better. If you are running either Windows XP or (especially that memory hog) Vista, you want MORE than 1 GIG of RAM. Your memory resident operating system + applications will generally take more than 1 GIG. Anytime Windows does not see enough "physical memory" (e.g. RAM) it will resort to "virtual memory", basically using your hard drive as extra "RAM". Unfortunately, this is about 1000 times SLOWER which makes the difference between 266 MHz and 400 MHz insignificant. Get MORE RAM. This is especially true if you have a motherboard in which the RAM is shared between your CPU(s) and your graphics chipset. In those cases, your graphics chipset will "steal" about 128-256 MB of memory right off the bat, leaving you with only part of the RAM for satisfying WINDOWS. You need more than 1 GB, especially to do installations like SP3. I think a 1 GIG machine would choke on downloading and installing SP3 because of all the VM "thrashing" it would do... 
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