What am I better off with, 512 of good low-latency ram, or 1 gig of lesser ram (or 768MB of something in between)? This is going in a gaming system, to run with a Socket 754 Athlon 64.
I'd have to say that I'd probably go for the 1gb option. obviously lower latency stuff is good but some newer games are showing obvious advantages to having 1gb. you can probably get away with 512 for a little while yet though. I do. having said that, I'm thinking of trying to sell my 2x256 BH-5 and getting 2x512 BH-5 to replace it. When I have a hundred quid spare, which probably means september the way things are going.
a gig of cheap ram will out do a very expensive extrem stick of only 512. of course with onyl one decent stick of 512 u can always geta naother good stick later. Kingston Hyper X for me!
I know it sounds obvious but it all depends what you do, if you tend to exceed 512MB then the 1GB is going to be much better, if your very rarely exceed 512MB the low latency stick will be better BUT even then it's usually only a 5%ish boost. As super 512MB sticks cost about the same as a decent 1GB stick (or 2x512MB) I'd strongly urge you to go 1GB. Ensure you buy branded RAM. As said we are now entering a time where ? 512MB is preferable, esp to play new games with very high details ... but then is your gfx card up to that anyway? You don't want to choke an Athlon64, and I'd say 512MB (albeit low latency) is more likely to do that than 1GB.
I'd say in normal use 2x512 of standard RAM. There is a minimal benifit from low latencies (I'm one to talk) that you won't notice in day to day apps. 1 gig will show more benifits in memory intesive apps and newer games unless you are into heavy overclocking.
