"...A poll by any other name would smell as sweet as DRAM..."
by Gary Key on April 9, 2009 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
Now that William Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave due to the hack job on one of his more famous quotes in Romeo and Juliet, we can proceed straight to our poll for today. The first of several DDR2/DDR3 articles arrives shortly and we would like to know your thoughts up front on a variety of subjects surrounding system memory.
We will sidestep sticky questions like what is your favorite and worst memory supplier until later on this month. For today, we would greatly appreciate a response (informed or otherwise) to our three questions. Our first question concerns the primary driving factor that determines why you select a particular memory type or supplier. Personally, I want a quality product that is stable and never once makes me wonder why that BSOD occurred right before saving my article document. I am probably in the minority on this one but it will be interesting to see what you think.
Our second question is a simple one. How much system memory do you have currently? Once again, I am probably in the minority, as I tend to run eight to twelve gigabytes in my personal systems. My family and I tend to multitask a lot - or perhaps we are just too lazy to close multiple applications. Either way, I prefer a responsive system when working or playing and additional memory does tend to help. How much it helps is a question we will answer this month.
The final question is actually very simple. With Vista 64 finally having decent driver support, memory prices near all time lows, applications consuming even greater amounts of memory, and Windows 7 shipping later this year with an emphasis on 64-bit support, do you think it is time to buy more memory. The memory manufacturers are hoping for a resounding yes to this question. I think you can never have enough memory and at today's prices that isn't too difficult to accomplish.
We look forward to your answers and any comments you might have on this subject.
{poll 129:1200}
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trabpukcip - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
We need 2 new poll options.First Question:
I buy it as long as it has heatspreaders so I don't static zap the darn thing.
Second Question:
Yes when I move on from XP ;)
Demon-Xanth - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
Performance and price dictates what speed I'm going to get (ie: DDR2-800), but quality in the reliability sense dictates what brand I get. For me they're largely two separate decisions.jebo - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
I suspect most people are like me, in that there are multiple factors that weigh more-or-less equally into the equation.I'm not interested in no-name, cheapo DRAM, so I do stick to the brands I know and trust; Corsair, Kingston, OCZ come to mind first, because I can rest easy knowing I'll get good performance with good reliability.
However, if OCZ is $10 cheaper than Corsair, my decision will boil down to price.
And ultimately, we're all in it for performance, right. So tight timings and low voltage will of course become a factor as well.
So, while I picked the "Balance of price/performance" answer, stability is a chief concern as well.
Natfly - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
I tend to buy the cheapest DDR2-800 when I need more memory or a deal pops up on slickdeals. Its been A-Data lately. I had one bad DIMM DOA in a 2x1GB which I was going to RMA but the stuff is so cheap I just bought another DIMM.Right now I've got 4GB in my laptop, 4GB in my desktop, 6GB in my server, and 4GB in my work laptop. All DDR2.
The0ne - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
# I love good marketing campaigns and product reviews, you tell me what particular product or company to pick.# I am looking for the best possible blend of performance and price, so customer support nor product quality is of primary importance
First selection. I don't think pairing up marketing and product reviews is a good option...at all. It's like telling your users your articles are marketing campaigns and in a word bias. I selected this option because I do rely on hardware reviews prior to my purchase, with then shifts to the second choice.
I've noticed most users select this option. I may be mistaken but I believe most of them don't know how to determine "the best possible blend of performance and price" other than relying on the first selection. And even if most do, they will still rely on reviews.
Just my two cents,
Captain828 - Sunday, April 12, 2009 - link
I agree with that... I went with the first one.erple2 - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
So that more or less dictates the RAM type I buy.Seriously. Is there really a difference between one well-known brand and another? They're getting their base chips from the same place, how different can it really be?
Gimmicks are just that. Gimmicks. I don't run a database server. I don't run a continuous integration compile server (not that speed is required for that). I don't run compiles all the time. So memory speed makes a very small impact on what I do.
Oh, and I don't run benchmarks all day either. Which I think is the only actual reason to buy crazy expensive, high speed, low latency memory any more. If I were doing the other tasks (high usage database, continuous compiling, etc) then I'd pick higher performance memory. But, my last purchase was some "OCZ Vista Value RAM". DDR2-800, no idea what the timings are. I haven't noticed that the machine is slow.
The0ne - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
Well, I have Super Talent DDR-800 running at 5-5-5-15 @1000+.strikeback03 - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
I have 4GB right now, as I use Photoshop in XP 32bit no point in more, I use Ubuntu 64bit for other day-to-day usage so that isn't memory-intensive. My next build will be Nehalem based, so I'll get either 8 or 12GB for that, depending on if I wait for the dual-channel i5 processors to come out or not.As far as what I look for, I generally look for the best price from a major vendor on memory that meets the speed/timings/voltage I am looking for. Don't do much overclocking, so for me I would expect a G.Skill kit to perform as well as a Mushkin kit. I have bought mostly Corsair, but have also used Patriot, G.Skill, and Crucial.
LuxZg - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
I was between "it's all about price" and last answer "blend of price and performance etc"This is mostly the same thing, though I've picked the second answer as it's more accurate. I'm not going to buy DDR2 667 just because it's 1$ cheaper.
I've been buying cheapest available DDR2 800MHz memory modules for a while now. I'm not getting DDR3 system untill price/performance starts to shift to it's size, and I don't believe that in majority of applications you get any tangible performance boost from overclocking memory.
I do overclock my C2D E4400, but I use dividers to keep memory at DDR800.
As for reliability, I really haven't had memory related problems in years - so I'm not falling for that one. For a while now I've been buying Kingmax memory, but mostly cos it's cheapest and has a good warranty in local stores. A-DATA, GoodRAM and SuperTalent are around there mostly.. I'm not picky, or brand-loyal at all.. But I guess that in certain markets importers of certain brands have best prices and are trying to keep it that way.
So what's left besides higher clocks and avoiding "suspicious brands"? I'll tell you - I'm always falling for warranty if price difference isn't large (10$), no matter which product. OK, since RAM is cheap, 10$ is a lot, so you could say that for RAM it's ~10%. There have been memory modules lately with 10 year warranty, so when I go shopping next time, I'll probably take one of those. Yeah, no lifetime warranties in my country, it's mostly 1-3 years, and like I've said last month or so I've seen several modules with 5 and 10y warranty.
As for amount of RAM, well.. I've read a recent article saying that 4GB is enough. I tend to agree - for now. I don't buy RAM just to feel nice, but if I see my virtual memory peaking close to my maximum RAM, than I'm going shopping. For now, on XP 32bit, and with biggest apps being games - 4GB is enough. In a short while I'm going Windows 7 64bit, so we'll see.. But although I do multitask a lot, it's the "light" kind of apps (mail, web, picture viewers, music and video players). If I play a game mostly there isn't much going on in the background, not because of RAM, but because of CPU and disk activity (loading times). But like I've said, if I see virtual memory going higher than 3GB a lot.. more RAM will be bought.
Oh, and ofcourse, once I do a complete system upgrade (somewhere at the start of 2010 probably), I'll make sure I get more RAM. Specialy if I get some kind of tripple-chanel system (6 memory modules)