1X2 gig ram + 1X512 or 2X1gig

Hi, first I'd like to apologise if this has been asked a thousand times before.

I'm wondering whether to upgrade my ram from the current 2X512 DDR2 667 to either a total of 2.5 gigs by putting in one 2 gig stick of ram, or to just get 2X 1 gig sticks. Would the added speed of the dual channel 2 gigs offset the extra half gig of ram?

 

No, probably not but the 2gb sticks are more expensive and personally, i don't need 2.5gb ram, 2gb ram is good enough for me.

 

I have a geforce 8600gt, and I was thinking that having a half gig extra would be useful when the graphics card starts using extra memmory from the ram...

Another question: If I got a 2 gig stick or ram with cat latency 4, and still had a 512 stick of cat 5, would the cat 4 be fully utilized?

 

Yeah but the ram will downclock to lower speeds. btw 2.5 Gb is better than 2Gb dual channel

 

not true~ by running dual channel, you are doubling bandwidth of the memory. unless you can fully utilize the extra 512mb, you should always run dual channel and lower latency.

 

Well, I havent' been able to find 2X 1gig of 667 ddr2 w/ cat latency of 4, I saw some with cat 4 on newegg, but they were slower (550MHz?)

I think I would be utilizing the extra 512mb, if not for extra vram, then for storing more data so the hdd wouldn't be called as often (I have a 5400rpm hdd, so whenever it is used in a game, the game stops, waits for it for about 10 sec, and then continues...)

 

most if not all DD2 667Mhz 200pin will be CAS 5. You won't notice a thing between CAS 5 and 4 since Intel processor benifit more from clock than timing. However, you may see a frame rate improvement in games when going dual channel.

 

I'd say go with the 2X1GB because of the dual channel and the fact that it is much, much cheaper.

Your video card/embedded chipset will probably only use so much extra RAM so even having 4GB would not matter.

And data is still going to be called from your hard-drive during video games because it is stored there. Memory on RAM is not permanent. Really it only works the opposite way around, with your hard-drive being used as replacement for RAM if you have pretty much only like 256MB and you are trying to do something stupid like run the Crysis demo.

And a thing on the timings: you're not going to need CAS 4 timings unless you really wanted something like a 2 fps bump. Mostly it'll depend on your video card and such; having a ton of memory will not bump up your loading times and fps too terribly much.

 

Of course on desktop system and 5% of high end laptops otherwise no it wont be of a use read the dual channel sticky for more

 

Depending on your applications, 99% of notebook users will not notice a difference between 2+0.5GB vs 1+1GB. In real world performance, differences in dual channel vs single channel and 4 vs 5 CAS latency are negligible.

 

Specifically, what about crysis, and other very demanding games?