What Memory

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LVCapo
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Post by LVCapo »

The $70 difference is pure Bilng.......nothing more, some ICs, same performance...you are just paying for the LEDs.

I love that word Bling...so much so that the cat I just adopted got his name changed from Ling Ling to Bling Bling
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killswitch83
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Post by killswitch83 »

roflmao, crazy man you, heheh.....personally, I don't need the bling (no pun intended :P ), I just look for pure performance, nothing fancy there, although I did talk about wanting the Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D at one time for the UV-reactant expansion slots, lol. How well do the 3500LL's OC btw?
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LVCapo
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Post by LVCapo »

article should be up tomorrow
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killswitch83
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Post by killswitch83 »

ahh ok, you're working with this kit then? I see.....

Can't wait to see what this kit can yield.....of course $315 is a little high for me, but like I said, if Christmas money comes this year, I'm going to at least get the memory I want....figured I would build a cheap system for right now as my old K6-2 is about to die....HDD is beginning to show signs of an imminent major crash, not to mention the CPU is on the edge of status FUBAR......it's either that, or buy a cheap system for right now and keep it as a backup later....we'll see what happens 8)
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LVCapo
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Post by LVCapo »

I would rank the kits in this order
1. Crucial Ballstix PC4000 (Pass on the Tracer kit)
2. Corsair TwinX2048-3500LL PRO
3. OCZ PC-4000 Platinum
4. Mushkin Extreme Performance PC4000

The OCZ is a damn good kit, but is almost impossible to find as to the Corsair kit, I think it will come down a little bit after the demand slows down. I was running it rock solid at 263FSB (3-3-3-8) for a week, and it was never even warm to the touch
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killswitch83
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Post by killswitch83 »

so I've noticed, went on Newegg to check availability and saw they didn't have any.....always best to wait out the hype and buy the kit when fan-fare dies down, eh?
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

killswitch83 wrote:btw capper, I have a simple question....now looking at it, the Corsair kit looks great, however, this question is about two Crucial kits: Ballistix PC-4000 and Ballistix Tracer PC-4000. What is the difference to yield a $70+ price difference? This eludes me, lol
The Tracer kit comes with flashing LED's onto, just like Corairs XMS Pro chips......apart from that, nothing ;)
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Post by DanielDev »

@andy
Your PSU is fine, all u need, unless you want ot go SLI or Crossfire
Since the board u got cant do either i think your PSU is fine.

About the Harddisks, it doesnt matter that much,
i just recommend 1 from Western Digital or Maxtor

@capper
nice to see Crucial got a good RMA service,
and ur probably right 300 is probably a bit to much for pc 4000
PS: looking forward to ur article :)
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Post by kenc51 »

andy2583 wrote:Would this powersupply be enough to power what i've got ? Akasa PaxPower 460W PSU Ultra Quiet V2.01 ATX or do i need to go higher !

Also what do you guys recommend for hard drives ?

Can i go the new sata 2 ?

Id like to do 2xsata drives on a raid 0 setup as i've been reading this is a good imrovement in access times etc ? ?

Cheers
you can't go wrong with Seagate for HDD's
That PSU will do fine...I haven't used Akasa B4 but haven't heard any bad stories..so sould be ok
SATA2 will work fine with older SATA controllers, they just won't have the same burst speed (which doesn't increase performance anyway), NCQ and hotplug (also supported with SATA2) doesn't do ANYTHING worthwhile....so yep SATA2 will work
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Post by andy2583 »

Sweet, thanks for the replys guys !

I'll go for the standard sata 1 then yes ? 16 mb cache ?

Will having 2xsata 1, 16mb cache drives set up as raid 0 see any decent performance gains ?

Ill go for that psu i mentioned then as it won the award in custom pc mag recently too !

Just got to decide on the memory now then, then i think i'm all set !

Will i see much difference between having 1gb(2x512's) compared to 2x1gigs ?

Just to update what i've got so far

DFI Lanparty 875p-t
P4 640 2mb cache with Artic freezer 7 (775)
Thermaltake Soprano case with side window
Msi 6800GT
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killswitch83
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Post by killswitch83 »

well, if you have 2 gigs of RAM, it's better for gaming due to the extreme detail used in many games like BF2, COD2, and Doom3. of course, you'll end up with a higher-density RAM, which could cause timings to not be as tight (might have to go to 2T command rate instead of 1T, depending on RAM density). Otherwise, ken and capper can chime in on this one, as capper just got through with a memory review and could suggest an excellent 2 GB kit...would go into it further, but I gotta go to work, lol. :rolleyes:
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

Andy, 2GB is NOT essential @ the moment, The only real game that benefits is BF2. But since BF2 is a new game, I can see alot more games coming out which will love 2GB.
LR has just done a Review on some nice sticks of Ram, there are also some more reviews from LR done earlier this year.
Running 2 drives in Raid0 to me is pointless....if one drive fails or corrupts all data is lost (corrupted data can happen easily when overclocking if your not carefull) The performance is just not worth it, you can try it, but i doubt you will see any real difference. (other will tell you raid0 is super for loading games)
SATA 1 or 2 doesn't really matter, just go for brand name, 8mb cache or 16mb and as musch as your budget can afford. (I prefer to buy 1 200GB hdd a year that 2x 100GB drives -> I know i will need the extra space later and having 1 HDD slot taken is beeter than 2!)

You have one very nice system coming along there ;)
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Post by LVCapo »

I'm working on my last memory article, where I'm going to cover the difference between a 2GB kit and a 1GB kit. Besides BF 2, more games are coming out in short order that not only take advantage of 2GB kits, but also dual core processors.
As to the RAID question, its a complete waste unless you are going to run RAID3 or 5, but even then with these drives featuring 16MB cache, a single drive is plenty fast.
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Post by DanielDev »

kenc51 wrote:Andy, 2GB is NOT essential @ the moment, The only real game that benefits is BF2. But since BF2 is a new game, I can see alot more games coming out which will love 2GB.
i agree, it isnt really required to have 2gb now, but it would be a smart choice for the future
kenc51 wrote:I prefer to buy 1 200GB hdd a year that 2x 100GB drives -> I know i will need the extra space later and having 1 HDD slot taken is beeter than 2!)
Again i agree, i think it would be better to buy 1 big hd then 2 smaller ones,
u save hd slots so u can get more hd's in the future when u need em
besides raid 0 shouldnt make that much of a difference
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Post by andy2583 »

hi again guys

I think the ocz 2 gig kit is proving to be a litle too expensive for me, is there anything cheaper for me out there ? would still like to be looking at pc4000 memory tho !

Oh and if i dont see you before....Merry Christmas !
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

What's you budget?
Since your running Intel, if your gonna OC, then you'll have have to pay for fast ram...... (the ram needs to run with FSB for performance)
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FZ1
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Post by FZ1 »

GSkill makes some nice stuff and is starting to gain popularity so it's not too expensive.
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kenc51
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Post by kenc51 »

G.Skill were always popular ;)
You guys in the States are a bit behind this time....LOL
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Post by FZ1 »

So what else is new? hehe
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killswitch83
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Post by killswitch83 »

I was thinking about a GSkill kit myself, due to the inexpensiveness, and I've also heard their older stuff has BH-5 IC's :shock:

Wish I could find some of that stuff, would jump all over it if I had the money
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