gregmcd
03-31-2004, 06:19 PM
I have been reading the test results from the forums and still have questions on memory for my next project PC. Around 8 months ago I built a PC for my daughter to take to school for graphic design courses (It needed to be fast with great graphics). It was an Asus P4C800E / 2.8C / 4 - 512M sticks of Hyper-X PC3500 / 2- 40 GIG Raptor RAID Array / Antec True Power550 / with an ATI 9800 Pro 256 Meg video card. To keep it simple I used the ASUS overclocking in the BIOS. The thing flies, it is the fastest PC I have ever used and is rock stable. The FSB is around 900mhz and the CPU is running around 3.2gig according to the speed tests that I have run. My dilemma is that I am going to build another PC for my son (his let the smoke out… PII 300 running at 450 for all its life) and it will be another Asus P4C800E / 2.8E / 2- 40 GIG Raptor RAID Array / Thermaltake Silent Pure Power 480 with an ATI 9700 Pro 256m video card. What memory do I use??? I want to run 1 gig total but have seen some reports showing double sided is faster than the single sided Kingston that I used last time, BUT I have also read that the PAT will not enable if you overclock while using 4 double sided sticks of memory.
From the Anand Tech test “The fastest configuration should be 4 Double-Bank DIMMs on the Intel 875 chipset motherboard. Our first efforts to test this configuration, with 4 x 256 DS OCZ 3700 GOLD modules did not show 4 DS DIMMs any faster than 2 DS DIMMs on the ASUS P4C800-E. This was a real puzzle considering that other predicted configurations were easily verified with Quake3, Super PI and other benchmarks. When we looked deeper, the problem became clear. In every configuration that we had tested with the ASUS P4C800-E, the Performance Mode showed “enabled” but with 4 DS DIMMs at any FSB speed faster than 800, CPU-Z 1.18C shows Performance Mode “disabled”. Our trial was failing here because we were comparing 2 DS DIMMs with PAT on to 4 DS DIMMs with PAT off.”
So my main question is what memory configuration will give me the best performance with the 2.8E??? I am attempting to keep the memory price under $350 or so. Will 2 512 double sided sticks be better than 4 256 double sided sticks because of the PAT issue? Is PAT technology a factor? Is there a fix to make PAT work if I run 4 double-sided sticks of memory? Will I run faster with 4 sticks of Kingston PC4300 with the loose 3 4 4 8 timings or 4 (or 2 if preferred) sticks of OCZ 4200 EL with 2.5 4 4 7 timings? Does the 2.8E overclock better than the 2.8C? Will the factory Intel cooling fan work? Should I remove the goo that Intel put on their heatsink and replace it with silver heatsink paste? Wow that is a lot of questions…
Please keep in mind that stability and longevity are paramount and speed is just a bonus to buying the good stuff.
Thanks,
Greg
From the Anand Tech test “The fastest configuration should be 4 Double-Bank DIMMs on the Intel 875 chipset motherboard. Our first efforts to test this configuration, with 4 x 256 DS OCZ 3700 GOLD modules did not show 4 DS DIMMs any faster than 2 DS DIMMs on the ASUS P4C800-E. This was a real puzzle considering that other predicted configurations were easily verified with Quake3, Super PI and other benchmarks. When we looked deeper, the problem became clear. In every configuration that we had tested with the ASUS P4C800-E, the Performance Mode showed “enabled” but with 4 DS DIMMs at any FSB speed faster than 800, CPU-Z 1.18C shows Performance Mode “disabled”. Our trial was failing here because we were comparing 2 DS DIMMs with PAT on to 4 DS DIMMs with PAT off.”
So my main question is what memory configuration will give me the best performance with the 2.8E??? I am attempting to keep the memory price under $350 or so. Will 2 512 double sided sticks be better than 4 256 double sided sticks because of the PAT issue? Is PAT technology a factor? Is there a fix to make PAT work if I run 4 double-sided sticks of memory? Will I run faster with 4 sticks of Kingston PC4300 with the loose 3 4 4 8 timings or 4 (or 2 if preferred) sticks of OCZ 4200 EL with 2.5 4 4 7 timings? Does the 2.8E overclock better than the 2.8C? Will the factory Intel cooling fan work? Should I remove the goo that Intel put on their heatsink and replace it with silver heatsink paste? Wow that is a lot of questions…
Please keep in mind that stability and longevity are paramount and speed is just a bonus to buying the good stuff.
Thanks,
Greg