RAM help needed!

[richbeck2]

Hi,

I have a question about ram, it is kind of in two parts:

1) Which is better: A) to fill your 4 ram slots with 4* 512 chips or B) to fill them with with 2* 1GB chips?

2) To use "5-5-5-12" or "4-4-4-12" timings?

These are the the most likely I am going to choose from to upgrade my 1GB of 667mhz:

4*512mb DDR2 ram 800mhz
CAS 5-5-5-12 Timings

2*1GB DDR2 ram 800mhz
CAS 4-4-4-12 Timings

Please advise me!

[Geoff]

1) If the machine has dual channel support, then use two sticks.

3) 4-4-4-12 is faster, thus better. However your ram might not like running at this speed. Plus it's arguable if it'd make a noticeable difference

[richbeck2]

Thanks for your help, this might help you to work out more about my pc (full spec which dell sent to me (September 05):

Dell Precision 380 - Intel Pentium 4 Processor 670 (3.8GHz,2MB Cache,800MHz FSB)
Vertical Chassis Orientation (Minitower, W: 170,2 x H: 447.3 x D: 468.4 mm) with IEEE1394 Front Connector
1GB DDR2 667 ECC Dual Channel Memory (2x512 2-R)
Internal Media Card Reader
160GB (7,200rpm) SATA Hard Drive with Native Command Queueing
20/48X IDE CD ROM Internal
C1 - All SATA drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration
FP/MG - UK/Irish - 19in (E193FP TCO99) Value Midnight Grey Flat Panel
128MB PCIe x16 (DVI/VGA) ATI FireGL V3100, Dual Monitor VGA or DVI/VGA Graphics Card
Sound Blaster® Audigy 2 Soundcard with onboard 1394
UK/Ireland - Dell A425 Speakers Mid Night Grey
English - Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2

(removed most of the junk from the above), it looks like I need to upgrade:

Sound card
Speakers
RAM

And the PC is going great for it's age (does prove you need to get a decent PC which will last)!

[richbeck2]

I believe I can only take up to 800mhz ram successfully? Am I correct?

[bazuk]

hi all
My suggestion is kingston.com they have a nice little program for telling you what you can upgrade a machine too, you just run it on your machine and it comes up with the results.

baz

[PeterW]

677Mhz is the maximum the chipset will run the ram at.

I would just get another 2x 512MB 677Mhz ECC to take you upto 2GB. You will not really see any speed increase with the lower timings.