Core 2 Duo: Effects Of Memory Timings

Depending on how often you upgrade your system it might be worth thinking about buying better ram with a core 2 duo (especially 800 over 667) so as to better future proof your system.

For example within the lifespan of ddr2 you may want to switch back to socket AM2 in which case 800 would be better than 667 (assuming similar timings of course) due to not being bottlenecked by a FSB. Also intel may up the FSB on the desktop to 1333 although dual channel 667 would likely be enough in that case (you wouldn't need such aggressive overclocking though to make use of ddr2 800 when compared to raising the FSB from 1066 to 1600).

Something to think about especially as the price premium of 800 over 667 goes down which I imagine it should do fairly quickly now that both AMD and intel support it.

Going a bit off topic I must say I've had my athlon xp system for 2.5 years now and with all that's going on at the mo I'm itching to build a new PC just because the performace and prices are looking increasingly good against my system but think I'm gonna wait a while longer. Definitely looking forward to AMD's transition to 65nm as well as the quad cores!

 

This is somewhat off topic but..

After reading this article I did my normal rounds around the web. There is a story at the INQ that states that AM2 gets little out of dual channel ddr2 I was wondering if anyone knew if this was the case with Conroe/Allendale chips as well.

This would be an interesting topic to review, that is if no one knows the answer.

Its already been proven here that latency does not matter as much as on other architectures. If we knew if/if not picking up a 2gb stick gives simmilar performance to 2x1gb sticks, then our overclocking potentials could futher benifit, due to not having to match the speed of both dimms to the slower of the two. Not to mention possibly save people some money.

 

granted these are (2) 512MB modules, it was the best price I could find at the moment.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80061-3

I don't see myself going over 2GB so I'll fill mine up with 512's.