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I am from Vienna (Austria), so maybe my English isnt perfect.


My new Motherboard (Asus A7V880 w/ Barton 3200+ (200MHz), VIA KT880, Socket A) doesnt really work good w/ my old Infineon 3rd DIMMs, So I need new memory.

I can only pay max. 90€ (about 110$), better would be <85€ (about 100$).

I thought about this Modules (all links in German):

MDT DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5 (PC400), €40,90 per DIMM
Samsung DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL3 (PC400), €40,98 per DIMM
Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL3-3-3 (PC400) (KVR400X64C3A/512), €41,60 per DIMM
Corsair DIMM ValueSelect Kit 1024MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5-3-3-8-2T (PC400) (VS1GBKIT400), €83,70 (for 2 DIMMs)
GeIL DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5 Value Series (PC400), €43,90 per DIMM
G.Skill DIMM Kit 1024MB PC3200 DDR (PC400) (F1-3200PHU2-1GBNT) (2,5-4-4-8), €84,- for 2 DIMMs
Extrememory DIMM 512MB PC3200 DDR CL2.5-4-4-8 (PC400) (512-DD1N-400D25-C1), €36 per DIMM

80€ are about 95$, 72€ are about 85$.

The prices are from the cheapest offline-shops in Vienna (Austria).

Kingston and GeIL have livelong warranty, Corsair 10 Years, G.Skill, MDT and Samsung 3 Years and Extremmemmory 2 Years. Corsair and Kingston are on teh supported vendor list for my Mobo, but this is not so important, because I can RMA the memory if it doesnt work w/ my Mobo. I dont really know if 3 Years warranty will be enough for me, so i would preferr longer warrantys. but it doesnt matter so much than Extremmemory has only 2 Years, because they are much cheaper than the rest.

GeIL also has l life long warranty, but they also cost >85€ (2x€43,90=€87,80), so I would only take them, if the performance really makes a noticeable difference in games (not only in benchmarks)...

Also I would only take the G.Skill, if there is a noticeable difference in games, because they dont have them in any shop now and I would have to wait, until they arrive.

If there isnt a lot of difference betwenn Extremmemory and the other modules in Games I would take the extremmemory, because of the price.

You can also suggest me modules, that I havent posted.

I will also overclock and use lower timings than officially supported, if it runs stable (but my Motherboard only supports max. 227MHz and my Barton is locked, so I cannot go very high w/ the FSB).

About the Corsair: I couldnt find out, if they support 1T or 2T command rate (in some shops it says 2T, in others 1T). Do you think, tehy support 1T, or only 2T in Dual Channel mode? And what about the other modules? I havent found anything about their command rate.

GeIL and the G.Skill only support 2,5-4-4-8 (the others support 2,5-3-3-8 or 3-3-3-8, I was not able to find out what timings the extremmemory support, except that they are CL2,5). I also noticed, that tRCD (the second timing) makes much a bigger difference than CAS (the first) at least on my old Epox 8rda+ nForce2 Mobo (i wasent able to test it on my new Mobo, because I first have to get directx to work). the difference was about 100-150 popints in 3DMark01SE betweeen tRCD 2 and 3, but only about 40 Points betweeen CAS 2 and 3.

Do you think, that GeIL and G.Skill will also run stable@2,5-3-3-8?

Do you think, that because of the worse rating the timings will also be worse than w/ the other DIMMs?


The Extremmemmory DIMMS only cost 36€ for this week, next week they will cost 59€ in this shop and the cheapest I can get them for in other shops is €43,50.

So it would be good, if you answer before Saturday (I am in Austria, and in Austria all shops are closed on Sunday).

I usually buy Kingston and Corsair for myself. No complaints in either case.

I'll add Crucial to Ian's list.

I don't concern myself with warranty length.
That which I bought with 3 year warranty two years ago for $100 now sells for $25.
If it fails, it is not worth bothering with the warranty.

Slim

Ian wrote:I usually buy Kingston and Corsair for myself. No complaints in either case.

Ditto. I like Crucial as well, but they sometimes cost more. If you're not overclocking, Kingston ValueRAM is a great bargain with a lifetime warranty.

I'm running Kingston HyperX at home and have been pleased with it. Before that, I was running Corsair XMS and it was good too.

I would first check and see what memory Asus recommends for use with this board.

I've had good luck with Corsair RAM lately, and Kingston a bit farther back.

As Slim said, Crucial is also very good, but I'm not sure how feasible that would be for you.

Corsair.


::Pranav::

running this memory:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146028

runs beautifully at stock 2.5V with timings of 2-2-2-5 1T

you'll find out that its better to run low timings then faster ram, better benchmarks and speed

ohh and it can't be in my system unless it lights up or does something cool and unusual

I recently ran into some Ram compatiblity issues with a ASUS P4S8X-MX motherboard and Ultra Ram.

I would recommend buying ram that is listed as compatible in the Motherboard Manual.

There are some ram manufacturers that allow you to enter your motherboard name and model number to find compatible ram.
http://www.crucial.com/

In my case the ram caused a "Bad Bios Checksum" error on a cold boot. Then after 30 seconds or so, you boot again and all would run great. Went through a fair bit of hassel and trouble shooting to determine that it was definetly the ram. Don't waste your money if you don't know its compatible.

bios update?

hoxlund wrote:bios update?

I went through all that. Cleared CMOS, updated bios to newest version, Cleared cmos again, put in new battery. When the computer was booted after being powered down for 30 minutes or more the "bad bios checksum" error would come up. Wait 30 seconds, push reset and the computer would boot normally. Booted to "windows memory diagnostic", ran all of the tests, no errors. Called ASUS tech support and was told to try a different stick of ram. Put in a stick listed in the manual and no problems. Everything works fine. Took the Ultra stick that had been causing the problems, put it in a SOYO board and it works fine, no problems. Ran Memtest86 all night no errors.

There was no way around it, that stick of ram was not going to work correctly in that motherboard.

which kind of memory was it, the brand and model

hoxlund wrote:which kind of memory was it, the brand and model

Ultra 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz ULT31664

I bought it a Tigerdirect.ca. The price went up. It was $69 after a $40 rebate, now its $119 after rebate.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1071020&Tab=0&NoMapp=0

I have it running in a SOYO SY-P4I 845PE motherboard with no problems at all. The one thing that is different is that it is only running at 266 mhz. The board won't let it run any faster. I have a 256MB Viking and a 256 MB Kingston in there with it. This morning it booted from cold with no problems. As I said before I ran it all night recently with Memtest86 and had no errors.
Its kind of funny that it runs well in the SOYO board. Previously, I had some problems with memory in that board as well. I was successful in getting things working by changing the order of the memory chips.

I think in the future I will pay a little more and deal with a store locally that has a good return policy. It would have been a whole lot easier to take it back and get a different brand.