20 replies to this topic

[moeburn]

So I've decided I want to add 4GB more RAM to the 4GB my system, but I can't figure out what speed I need. Obviously I could just match the speed of my current ram (2x Samsung 2GB DDR3 10700 667mhz), but I don't know if my motherboard is bottlenecking that speed, and if it is, I may as well buy slower RAM. But how do I figure out what RAM bus speed my motherboard/cpu is actually capable of?

Here's some snips from CPU-Z if that helps at all.



PS: I know this question has probably been asked a million times, but I tried looking for the answer on google, I read 3 guides to understanding memory, I searched the forums, couldn't find my answer.

[Haggis]

what motherboard do you have?

[TheReasonIFailed]

crucial.com

[moeburn]

Haggis, on 05 August 2012 - 18:02, said:

what motherboard do you have?

> Mainboard : Acer FRS780M
> North/South Chipset : AMD 780G/SB700
> CPU : Athlon II X4 620 2.6Ghz

There's practically no info for this mobo on the internet tho, I ripped it out of a friend's Acer machine, so its probably a special mobo that is only used in Acer OEM computer packages.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Why do you need 8Gb of ram?

You aren't going to see any performance increase with general tasks and gaming, 4Gb is plenty.

[Haggis]

I cant find any info on that mainboard lol

[TheLegendOfMart]

The 780G supports up to 16Gb of ram.

[deactivated_]

TheLegendOfMart, on 05 August 2012 - 18:17, said:

You aren't going to see any performance increase with general tasks and gaming, 4Gb is plenty.

You aren't going to see any performance decrease with general tasks and gaming, so enjoy your 8Gb once you figure out what you need! Seriously, RAM is dirt cheap these days, and more definitely will not have any negative impact on a system, and can only bring benefit. (However minimal in some or most real world circumstances.) Do I *need* the 24 Gb of RAM in my system? Probably not most of the time, but it's nice to have already in place for if/when there is a need for it.

To OP: My personal recommendation is if your system is happy with your current 2 chips, and you have 2 more free slots, buy identical RAM to what you have.

[Haggis]

Is your computer an Acer Aspire M3300?

heres the support manual it has the speeds in there

http://support.acer....OK_20090410.pdf

[Arceles]

In my case going from 1333 to 1600 improved drastically my ps2 emulation, 8gb is a nice upgrade when speeds or latency is lower, so I say go for it.

[Javik]

If you buy 1600 MHZ memory, it will be underclocked by your bios to match the speed of your 1333 sticks. If you want to buy 1600 MHZ memory, I'd personally sell your current kit and buy a brand new 8GB kit. I personally own this Corsair Vengeance LP 1600 MHZ kit, and it's both cheap and really fast.

[moeburn]

TheLegendOfMart, on 05 August 2012 - 18:17, said:

Why do you need 8Gb of ram?

You aren't going to see any performance increase with general tasks and gaming, 4Gb is plenty.

I do a lot of work in Photoshop and After Effects, and they are very memory-intensive apps. I also like to have uTorrent and Firefox running all the time, which are both also pretty heavy on the RAM. The other day I tried having all four apps open, and not only was my system incredibly slow, but also After Effects could only cache like 2 seconds of preview video (normally it can cache at least 30s).

Haggis, on 05 August 2012 - 18:31, said:

Is your computer an Acer Aspire M3300?

heres the support manual it has the speeds in there

http://support.acer....OK_20090410.pdf

It wasn't my computer, and it's just the motherboard from it, placed into a custom computer. But that SOUNDS like the computer it was, to the best of my memory (3 years ago).

So does anyone know what the max memory speed my mobo can support is? Because if my mobo can support higher RAM speeds than the RAM I currently have in there, I'll just replace the whole set with a faster 8GB set.

[Nothing Here]

I would go for Mushkin Enhanced Blackline DDR3 1600. It's the type I have. Get 16gigs of it, it's cheap enough anyways.

[Hum]

moeburn, on 05 August 2012 - 22:11, said:

So does anyone know what the max memory speed my mobo can support is? Because if my mobo can support higher RAM speeds than the RAM I currently have in there, I'll just replace the whole set with a faster 8GB set.

^ Why don't you simply go to crucial.com as previously suggested, and run the RAM app, which will tell you everything in less than a minute ?

http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

[Javik]

Lo Tec, on 05 August 2012 - 22:18, said:

I would go for Mushkin Enhanced Blackline DDR3 1600. It's the type I have. Get 16gigs of it, it's cheap enough anyways.

The spec sheet on his computer suggests that it has a max capacity of 8GB