"...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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iwodo - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
It is hard to tell... but do we still have memory incapability, BSOD .. etc these days?I haven't encounter one for many years.
And it has been proven there are very little performance difference between faster and slower memory. ( You get more performance by going to 2GB to 4GB rather then 2Gb with lower latency )
So, apart from price.. what's the difference?
Margalus - Thursday, April 16, 2009 - link
yes, there are still incompatabilities. I have an Asus Striker II formula mobo with nvidia 780i chipset, and crucial memory wich works perfectly in other motherboards gives data errors and bsod's, memory dumps and random reboots. I've tested numerous sticks of crucial, and even though they are all good, they refuse to cooperate with that particular motherboard all the time. Ocz ram on the otherhand works perfectly..cyriene - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
i was having random BSOD a few weeks ago. Took out the RAM and replaced with different sticks and everything is fine.I now need to RMA my bad kit back to Crucial
armandbr - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
>I now need to RMA my bad kit back to CrucialLOl I bought crucial ram recently.
I spent days figuring out why the pc refused even to boot.
It took me days, because I never imagined crucial ram could be dead on arrival. One of the sticks was dead.
The sticks that do work, just work fine. Timings are OK, it even works on lower voltages than advertized.
7Enigma - Monday, April 13, 2009 - link
Rule #1 with system building: K.I.S.S. Cpu, PSU, mobo, single stick of ram, integrated video if possible (otherwise GPU, and single gpu at that). Test boot.My first build I did the same thing. Had a matched pair of Patriot high-end ram and one stick was DOA. Spent a good 2 hours freaking out thinking I had shorted something...
jordanclock - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
But haven't you seen those wicked sweet looking heatsinks on some of those RAM kits? That's TOTALLY worth the premium.erple2 - Friday, April 10, 2009 - link
Hey! That' wasn't one of the choices! I suggest that Gary add another option to the poll:I'll buy into anything that relates to bright shiny objects on RAM.