Off Topic: Which RAM?

Ben wrote on 3/3/2002, 10:40 AM

I'm in the process of completely ripping the guts out of my PC, which is used solely for audio, and getting a new, well, virtually everything! It's not something I've done myself before so it's a bit of a learning curve for me, to say the least.

I've decided on a Pentium 4 1.8, an ASUS mobo, Maxtor hard drives... the only thing I'm unsure about now is which type of RAM to go for. I think I'm right in saying that DDR RAM is faster than SDRAM, right? But what about Rambus RAM? It's a lot more expensive, which I don't mind if it's going to make a significant difference for audio work? Is it worth paying more for this stuff? Oh, and do you reckon 512MB is enough?

Thanks in advance
Ben

Comments

wvg wrote on 3/3/2002, 11:31 AM

If you have a choice, I would go with the DDR memory. Prices have come way down. This type of memory is faster since it uses both the rising and falling front side bus frequencies to operate at double the rated BUS speeds. Originally only AMD CPU motherboards supported DDR memory. There should be some Intel boards out by now that do also. Rambus memory is overpriced and isn't faster then DDR, it fact may be slower. Getting 512 should be plenty of RAM. You could probably get by with 256 RAM, which is what I opted for and I routinely multitask (doing other things while rendering) and don't have any problems. I would suggest you go with XP and NTFS as far as your OS and file system.

evilstalkerhorne wrote on 3/3/2002, 11:42 AM

raid hard drives (7200) at level "0". Promise.com (it IS worth the money!)

jimcho wrote on 3/3/2002, 12:46 PM

Ben, if you have decided on the Pentium 4 1.8G, be aware that there are now 2 varieties. The older .18 micron/256K cache version and the new "Northwood" .13 micron/512K cache version. The "Northwood" processors originally came out at 2 & 2.2 Ghz but are now available at lower speeds. Make sure you get the newer .13 micron version since you will get better performance, cooler operation, and more headroom for overclocking (if you're into that sort of thing).

As for memory, Rambus goes very well with the Pentium 4 and will give you better performance now. Also where I live, a 256M stick costs about the same as DDR. Even though Rambus is dying and will likely be phased out, *any* memory you buy now will likely become obsolete by the time you upgrade again.

An excellent source for this type of information is http://www.tomshardware.com.

Wayne wrote on 3/3/2002, 4:19 PM

Good point. The way you can tell between them is the .18 is the 423 package, the .13 is the 478 package.

When I built by last system, I was comparing 2100 DDR and PC 800 RamBus. At that time, the Rambus was a few percent faster than the DDR when used for video editting. I see now that DDR is up to 2700. I would assume that DDR now beats Rambus for speed, from pricewatch it looks like 2700 DDR and PC800 are presently about the same cost.

I would also stay away from MBs with Via chipsets.

jimcho wrote on 3/3/2002, 9:30 PM

In order to take advantage of the fastest DDR ram, you need a chipset that can run it at its rated speed. I think only the new Via KT333 chipset can do that and it's an AMD only chipset.

An easy way to assemble a system is to go to http://www.tomshardware.com and copy the components from one of his reference systems.

Ben wrote on 3/4/2002, 5:39 AM

Thanks for all your help guys - has been genuinely very useful; much appreciated. I now feel like I almost know what I'm doing!

Regards
Ben