Right now I am building just a junker out of spare parts I have lying around in the closet, to go to LAN parties at work playing BF2.

Here are the specs so far -

Abit IC7-MAX 3 motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2
MSI 6800 Ultra
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
WD 10,000 RPM SATA 74gb hard drive
Plextor DVD burner


Question is, I tested the RAM I had (4 256mb sticks of Kingston Hyper-X I had lying around), and memtest86 found qute a few errors.  So I decided to buy new stuff, through my company.  

The ram we have in stock is Crucial, and I can get 1gig sticks for $60, at employee cost.  I have never used crucial ram before, always stuck with mushkin myself, but this is just a lowly LAN computer, and I dont need the fancy stuff.  Anyone use the basic Crucial ram (CAS 3 timings)?

I figure I will buy all 4 1gig sticks of the stuff, and just max out the motherboard from the get go.  ought to make for a decent LAN machine for BF2 I would think.  Just wanna make sure that the crucial is actually decent memory (I know the name is popular, and I like the Ballistix, just no experience with the plain stuff).

Thanks.

Crucial is generally decent stuff.


I have it in 3 machines, one old PIII 866 with only 384 megs, a PIV 2.4 at 1 gig PC2700.     And my recent build using an AMD64 3700+ with 2 gigs of PC3200.    I went with basic Crucial RAM that cost me barely 200 bucks for 2 gigs, probably same as what you are looking at with your employee discount.

I don't think I am gonna see any huge improvements by going with RAM that has super timings on it and certainly  not worth like 50-70 dollars more per gig of RAM, screw that.


As it sits my new build absolutely screams at loading and playing BF2.

I wouldn't go over 2 gigs for RAM.   It's doubtful that more than 2 gigs will be neccesary

Quoted: Crucial is generally decent stuff. I have it in 3 machines, one old PIII 866 with only 384 megs, a PIV 2.4 at 1 gig PC2700.     And my recent build using an AMD64 3700+ with 2 gigs of PC3200.    I went with basic Crucial RAM that cost me barely 200 bucks for 2 gigs, probably same as what you are looking at with your employee discount. I don't think I am gonna see any huge improvements by going with RAM that has super timings on it and certainly  not worth like 50-70 dollars more per gig of RAM, screw that. As it sits my new build absolutely screams at loading and playing BF2. I wouldn't go over 2 gigs for RAM.   It's doubtful that more than 2 gigs will be neccesary

Yeah, I know anything over two gigs is overkill.  I have caught FEAR using 2.2 gigs on my big gaming rig, but that game is a big time hog and video card killer.

We wont be getting the RAM at that price again anytime soon, when re re-order, so I figured I would just clean em out.

That's a strategy, get a ton of it and squirrel it away for future systems that are bare bones and could use an upgrade.


True AR15.com hording mentality and I can't fault that.

Quoted: That's a strategy, get a ton of it and squirrel it away for future systems that are bare bones and could use an upgrade. True AR15.com hording mentality and I can't fault that.

You ever try overclocking your crucial?

Quoted: Quoted: That's a strategy, get a ton of it and squirrel it away for future systems that are bare bones and could use an upgrade. True AR15.com hording mentality and I can't fault that. You ever try overclocking your crucial?

Some of the reviewers on Newegg.com have had good luck overclocking the crucial.

I wouldn't know though.  I stick with OCZ

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: That's a strategy, get a ton of it and squirrel it away for future systems that are bare bones and could use an upgrade. True AR15.com hording mentality and I can't fault that. You ever try overclocking your crucial? Some of the reviewers on Newegg.com have had good luck overclocking the crucial. I wouldn't know though.  I stick with OCZ

Mushkin > OCZ

but that aint saying that OCZ is bad.

Still, no where I have seen has OCZ one gig sticks for $60 each.

Can you get me some RAM for $60... HOLY CRAP!!!!

Quoted: Quoted: That's a strategy, get a ton of it and squirrel it away for future systems that are bare bones and could use an upgrade. True AR15.com hording mentality and I can't fault that. You ever try overclocking your crucial?

Nope, not gonna either.

I have a Gigabyte motherboard and I could overclock things if I wanted to but I'm not gonna risk it to sit around picking up 3-4fps here or there when the lowest FPS I see is around 50 while running BF2 at 1600x1200 with 2x A/A.

And I specifically bought Crucial RAM because I have zero desire to go on an overclocking jihad.  I'm not one of those tweak happy people who go out buying all the latest and greatest then overclock the hell out of it.

Just not worth it to me when I am more than happy with my performance.    Especially with nice cheapy RAM, you definitely wouldn't hear me complaining if I were saving even more by getting the Crucial for 60 bucks per gig.

I resell crucial memory to all my customers.    We rarely have a problem with the memory .   the only systems we have compatibily issue with are Dell's desktop's.   All other machines as long as you look up the memory on their web site, it is guaranteed to work.    

All the work station i build have crucial memory.   All the gaming systems i built have had corsair XMS memory.   the only game I had problems with is HL2 I constantly got memory errrors.   BUT any other game runs flawlessly.   just ask the bf2 clan we compete for hours at a time.   my only problem is my prblematic DSL connnection.    

JME  (just my experiece)

I am going to go ahead and clean out our stock of the stuff today.  I figure that even if I have trouble with some of it, Crucial does have a lifetime warranty.  I am within driving distance of Boise, I will take it back right to their doorstep

Well, so far I got the FSB on the stuff I picked up today (all 4 gigs), running at 247 Mhz.  Better than the Hyper-X, but higher timings here though.

That puts it at 3.95 Ghz, on water.  Not too bad, especially for that chip.

I also picked up an Ultra X-Connect PSU for this LAN party system, the old one that was in there I dont think was gonna cut it.  Played battlefield 2 for a couple hours tonight running this setup, it looks like this RAM was a pretty good buy after all.

Even better, was that I got it for $54 dollars per 1 gig stick, instead of $60 - our end of the year sale applies to employees as well