GUNNER Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 I got a question. For about a year I ran an Asus P4PE board with a P4 1.8A O/Ced to 2.5 (140FSB) If I upped the voltage to the chip a little I could get it to 150FSB. I also had 512Mg of Corsair XMS 3200 and a Leadtek Ti4400. Just recently when Doom3 came out I thought I should get a new vid card and some more ram and also in anticipation of HL2 and FarCry that I am playing now.... So I bought a Leadtek FX 5900XT card and another stick of Cosair XMS. Well I ran into some problems. The board doesn't like running at 140FSB with 2 sticks of ram in it so I had to back it down to 110FSB which is 2.0Ghz to get itto run smooth. So question is... Is it better to have a faster chip and more FSB but with only 512Mg of ram? Or to have a Gig of ram but with a slower chip speed and FSB. I know the card help out as it is but I was curious if I should just go back to one stick and crank the chip speed back up. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamtrip Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 Depends what else you do. If you use a lot of programmes or graphic intensive stuff, probably ram. If you justw ant a high fps, update your processor and 512 mb ram will suit you fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabretooth Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 RAM! RAM! RAM! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Treacherous Mercenary Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Looks like you would be better off with a better CPU as it would allow your ram to work better aswell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabrobot Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 You probably want to go with the RAM...when you have a gig of RAM then you should start worrying about your processor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrion Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Actually, you should go with CPU speed, because the FSB affects how fast both the CPU and RAM get. As well, P4's get really good gains from having more bandwidth(fsb=bandwidth). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 More RAM, get at least 1GB. A 2.5 GHz P4 is already good enough, i dont think your 5900 should bottleneck it since the 1GB is there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivy Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 you need a better FSB the FSB is where you're losing speed. as you probably know, the bus is what carries the information between the components. so if the bus is underperforming it will slow down the CPU and memory. i thought 140 was very low FSB for a P4, seeing as my 2.6 has a 533FSB. so i had a look on intel's site and it says that a P4 1.8A should have a FSB of 400 mhz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edlib Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 RAM or CPU? Is it not financially possible to upgrade both? Seems to me that if you do that you will get the best performance... Or maybe it's just time to upgrade the whole motherboard/ processor to something more up-to-date. I've always been a die-hard believer in maxxing out your RAM whenever possible. RAM usually comes in different speeds too, so be sure to get the fastest sticks that will work with your MOBO. But if you can upgrade both at the same time that's really the way to go. Don't forget to flash update your BIOS to the latest release to be sure that any upgrades you make are compatable with the motherboard hardware. Then dig around in the BIOS to see if there are any changes that need to be made to work fully with the new hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iamtrip Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 with 1gb of ram, unless you actually going to use it for thjings other than playing games, about half of it goes unused. Faster processor will speed up graphics, processing and the ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GUNNER Posted September 29, 2004 Author Share Posted September 29, 2004 Originally posted by Sivy you need a better FSB the FSB is where you're losing speed. as you probably know, the bus is what carries the information between the components. so if the bus is underperforming it will slow down the CPU and memory. i thought 140 was very low FSB for a P4, seeing as my 2.6 has a 533FSB. so i had a look on intel's site and it says that a P4 1.8A should have a FSB of 400 mhz. Sivy, your FSB is not actually 533. it is 133mhz. Ever hear Intel say the catch word "Quad Pumped". That means a 400mhz bus speed is really 100mhz X 4 or 400.. A 533 is 133FSB X 4 or 533 And the 800s are really 200 X 4. So when my FSB is set at 140 it is actually 560mhz which is faster then a 533. But at a 400mhz price. So before I added the extra stick it would do 140 no problem and now I have it down to 110, which is just a hair over stock. I know that speed is everything and with a faster FSB that is the key to get the info moving so I guess I will go back to a FSB of 140 with 512mg of ram and see what happens to my speed. Thanks guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivy Posted September 29, 2004 Share Posted September 29, 2004 Originally posted by GUNNER Ever hear Intel say the catch word "Quad Pumped" i wondered what they meant by that. you learn something new everyday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astrotoy7 Posted September 29, 2004 Share Posted September 29, 2004 Hey C'mon, since when has any of the existing OS's been demonstrated to effectively utilise 1gb of RAM..... lemme give you an analogy.... imagine an old VW beetle, go out and grab super duper racing-grade tyres for it...... whatever those tyres may help with(traction/torque etc), you've still got a VW beetle As long as you have 512 RAM, go with the processor speed chappy Then wait for OS's to catch up in smarts ..... mtfbwya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acdcfanbill Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 i would say cpu, 512 megs of ram is plenty for most gaming applictions and most other desktop applications too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kain Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 B0TH!!!111 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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