Hello All, OK, here I go again, one final question. My Asus P4C800-E uses PC3200 ram. Are there any advantages in going to PC3500, or PC3700 ram? And will it even function properly with this MB?Figure I would ask the guys who really knowThanks in advanceClay

I have essentially the same motherboard Clay. It's a P4C800-E Deluxe. I've used both Corsair PC3700 and Crucial PC3200. I've never run any sophisticated tests but, as far as simming goes, I never saw any difference between the two (or with anything else for that matter).Doug

I guess the only thing you could do would be to overclock your system (thus OCing your RAM in the process) with faster RAM. That way you can buy faster RAM and OC your system without OCing your RAM

The PC3200 (aka DDR400) is just an indication of how fast the ram could go. For instance, tires rated at 160mph just indicate how fast they could go before they will explode. Ram ratings works the same way. The car makes the tires go. What makes the ram go? The Front side buss (FSB). If you have a system that came installed with ram rated at PC3200 (aka DDR400), chances are that your system has a 200 mhz FSB. Intel "quad pumps" this FSB number so they call call it an 800mhz FSB. That's all marketing drivel. You have a 200 mhz FSB. The ram Doubles the Data Rate of the FSB ("DDR"s the FSB speed) to get an actual ram speed of 400mhz (2 X 200 = 400). Are you dizzy yet? A 200 mhz FSB can only drive DDR ram to 400 mhz. It does NOT matter that the ram COULD go faster. It will only go as fast as the FSB drives it. Very modern MoBos unlock the ram from the FSB so the ram can run at any speed . . . but that's most likely not your case.Also remember that DDR stopped at DDR400 (AKA PC3200) the next speed step was to DDR2@533. This stuff was rated to run with the newer 266 mhz FSBs . . . and it will not physically fit into the older PC3200 slots. Be careful there. DDR400 / PC3200 may be the fastest rated ram that will even fit into your mobo ram slots. But, forget about ram speed for this older box. What you really want to do is overclock the CPU. That's free and that'll get you some results.

Sam and all, Thanks so much for the information . . . as usual, my questions are completely answered with great logic, intelligence and speed. Thats what makes this hobby so fantastic -- the efforts of the whole group to help another in need.Best to all, Clay

Hi Clay,Not trying to be a dissident here, and especially not trying to disagree with Sam, but according to this article, an increase in memory speed will definitely improve system performance: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1849&p=1In synthetic benchmarks and somewhat dated games, performance was fairly significant. The importance of this to you is that for a small investment, you could possibly improve performance and extend the lifetime of your machine.Check out the article and you be the judge. It was tested with the same MB you're running. It might hold you over until you're ready to upgrade your whole system.Regards,Jim Karn[fontsize=1]NOTHING is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.[/fontsize]

Also remember that DDR stopped at DDR400 (AKA PC3200)...This is not true. Though becoming harder to find, faster DDR memory was made (I bought some PC4000 for my nf4 based single core system a few months ago)But, forget about ram speed for this older box.This really depends upon the system, specifically the motherboard. I'd be willing to bet Clay would see a performance increase on the system he described, although I'm not so sure the increase would be worth the cost.Greg