[kingofbeers]

Hello -


I have been in the process of constantly upgrading my HTPC for a while and may have come to the limiting factor of my systems performance.


I am looking to get 1GB of ram (2 x 512 in dual channel mode) but am not sure of what kind to get. I have the MSI neo2 motherboard K8T something er other, AMD 64 3500+, a ATI 9800 xt card yada yada yada. I built this up from a OEM Compaq that only had 256mb memory that I transferred to this rig. I then added an additional 512mb of I think pc2700.


When I try to run the "good" ffdshow settings with Theatertek 1.5.64 I get stuttering -- denoise 3d doesn't really work very well.


Anyway, I'm thinking about upgrading the memory to some fancy pc3200 or pc4000 but am not sure what to get. I heard the low latency stuff is good for the AMD 64's but more expensive. Also, what about the memory with built in heatsinks, necessary or not? So, any suggestions?


Kingston hyper x, corsair, ocz, etc. Help!


As usual, thanks in advance for your help.

 

[sotti]

pc3200 is probably good enough.


If you are having issues with stuttering it's probably related more to processing power than to ram bandwidth.


That said overall speed is more important than latency, but you probably won't be able to use as much speed as you might think.


In order to run anything faster than PC3200 you'll have to overclock your system.


The last K8 system I built I had PC4200 and ended up having to choose between running a 225mhz front side bus with the memory sync or running async with 245fsb and memory at 205ish


So I basically wasted a bunch of money getting expensive memory I really couldn't utilize.


I'd buy the corsair value PC3200 cas 2.5 sells for around $160 for 1GB.

 

[mnn1265]

I agree... I'm not at all familiar with AMD processor specs but I suspect you'll do much better to upgrade your CPU than to buy more/faster RAM. The ffdshow application is quite CPU intensive but on average consumes only about half of my 1Gb of RAM while it runs (this is total RAM usage including TT1.5 or Zoomplayer).

 

[sotti]

so let me just add a little clarity to my post about perfomance.


using low latency ram at 200mhz w/ 2.4ghz cpu out perfoms medium latency ram at 225mhz w/ 2.2ghz cpu ram.

 

[kingofbeers]

Thanks sotti -- I ended up getting some low latency stuff. I don't know if I'll ever get into overclocking or not, so the low latency stuff should fit the bill. I got some OCZ enhanced latency pc3200 with the following timings ... 2-3-2-5 1T. It goes out Monday from NewEgg. Can't wait! Thanks for the responses.