RAM speeds?

[Ju1c3]

how large of a difference would i see in going from 667mhz pc5300 to 800mhz pc6400? i currently have a gig in a laptop i just got this week and want to go to 2 gigs. the 2 gigs of 5300 cost $60 and the 6400 cost $100 for 2gb. is there a large enough difference in the speed to justify the extra $40?

i have a hp 6510b business notebook.


thanks

 

[DTracy]

Take a look at the specs of the laptop and see what the bus speed is. If it is 600 Mhz then changing memory speed is just a waste of money. However, increasing the volume of memory will help the overall speed of the machine.

David.

 

[paparazi]

OK, there are several things going on here:
1)The Data Bus Speed on your motherboard is 800mhz so installing 800mhz memory will help it run optimally with best performance.
2)I'm presuming with such a new laptop that it is running Vista? and if so there is a general consensous that 2gig provides a marked improvement over one gig (This does not apply to XP however)
3)Last but not least....from what I can deduce this laptop comes with a single 1gig memory module from new? so fitting a matched pair will also bring the added benefit of running in dual channel memory mode.
All the above will add up to a reasonable overall improvement in performance and considering how cheap memory is at the moment I believe this is a worthwhile upgrade.
Martin


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[Nelviticus]

All good advice but the original question was "is there a large enough difference in the speed (between pc5300 and pc6400)to justify the extra $40?"

I would say that the difference you'd notice in day-to-day use would be extremely small, but if $40 isn't a lot of money to you then go for the faster memory. It'll be faster, just not by a lot.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Gamer4life]

paparazi is indeed correct about FSB (Front side bus) speed and your RAM speed; you want the ratio between the two to be as close to 1:1 as possible, so there is no bottle neck in the system.

However, this is really only important to a power user or developer (i.e. Gamer, Video/Photo editor, Graphics rendering) If you're just doing day-to-day word processing, surfing, and general business keeping RAM at 667mhz/pc5300 would work just fine.

 

[Ju1c3]

well, i program, game, and do IT work from my computer.

I am running vista, but contrary to belief, vista will run just fine on 1gb if you tweak it. its what i was running before.

This has 2x512 modules.

i bought the pc6400, but im pissed now because i just discovered that the centrino duo is a x64 chip and i would have bought 4gb instead. oh well.

 

[paparazi]

Everything new is X64 infact everything in the last 2 years has had X64 architecture, going back to AMD 754's and most CeleronD 775's and they have been around for ages.
All capable of running 64bit OS.
Martin

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