Need advice about buying ram

[sabwafare2001]

Since my mothboard supports both pc133 and pc2100 ram, I was wondering wheather it's better to buy some pc133 512mb for $54.00, pc133 256mb, pc2100 256mb for $40.00 or just something else. Right now I have 384mb pc133 ram. The memory being name beand doesn't matter to me either. The next time I'll probably upgrade (mothboard,cpu) will be in until they shutdown on me or in about a year, whichever is first. Also I don't overclock, but I do play games. I play games like Warcraft 3, GTA 3, and Spiderman, but not games like Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tornament (which are sometimes used for benchmark tests).

ECS K7S5A [1/12/2k2]
AthlonXP 1800+
384MB PC133
80GB IBM 7200rpm, 20GB 5400rpm
Lite-on 24x10x40
Lite-on dvd 16x
Video Magic 64mb Video card
400W power supply

[wonderboy905]

If you're happy with your current systems performance there's no real need to switch to DDR ram. Sure it performas better, but the only difference I personally noticed was in my 3DMark score [img]smile.gif[/img] And even that wasn't big, my actual performance increase is virtually nothing with windows apps and I can encode movies slightly faster now... big whoop. However you might wish to scoop up DDR ram anyways ince you indicated you'll be upgrading soon and chances are the boards of tomorrow won't include SDRAM. At the same time, you might spend your money on DDR ram now only to find out much faster DDR is available and for much cheaper when you go to get your new board/cpu... (hammer anyone?)

So for that price, you might be better off pumping up on SDRAM [img]smile.gif[/img]

I know all the DDR freaks will all tell you to go out and get it, but the truth is the performance improvement isn't THAT noticeable and you might find yourself burned in the future with either much cheaper DDR prices or DDR that's a lot faster. Upgrade paths are getting harder and harder to predict, especially with the Barton and Hammer around the bend [img]smile.gif[/img]