DDR3 - worth it?

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EtienneK

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Hey all,

I'll be upgrading in the next month or so and I've been looking around at mobos. I'm thinking of upgrading to a Core II Duo E8500. Now the question is, should I go for a DDR2 board or a DDR3 board?

The DDR3 boards are quite expensive. They are about double the price (and more) of the DDR2 boards. Are they worth this extra money, though? Or should I rather use the extra money for a bigger GFX card?

Would like to hear your guys' opinions.

Thanks.
 
DDR3 is most definately not worth it. You'll be paying more for the motherboard and double for the RAM, with a 5% performance increase if you're lucky.

Rather get DDR2 and double the amount of RAM or a faster GFX card, which will give you a much bigger performance increase.
 
DDR3 isn't worth it at the price if you can go with DDR2, unless you have to get DDR3 which you won't have to with a Core II Duo E8500 system.
 
QX6700RULZ said:
Only get DDR3 with an i7 system or an AM3 system, not worth the cost for anything else
Click to expand...

yeah, I'm with QX3700RULZ on this one. The i7's and AM3's are designed to use the power of ddr3, while the core2duo doesn't really know what to do with it, all that happens is a faster bandwidth, that's it
 
On this topic, I see ome DDR2/3 DIMMS have the same clock speed (I see you can get DDR2 1066 and DDR3 1066).

Is there another difference between the two types?
 
Thanks for all the feedback, guys! One last question: Should I go for the E8500 or rather get a quad core for the same price?

People say that a quad core might be slower, now, but once apps get written for it, it'll blow the dual cores away. I don't really believe this, since the same was said for 32bit to 64bit.

Comments?
 
EtienneK said:
Thanks for all the feedback, guys! One last question: Should I go for the E8500 or rather get a quad core for the same price?

People say that a quad core might be slower, now, but once apps get written for it, it'll blow the dual cores away. I don't really believe this, since the same was said for 32bit to 64bit.

Comments?
Click to expand...

Games like Crysis and GTA IV are already benefiting from quad core.

Quad core + small overclock...
 
Do OSes benefit from quad core?

XP would use all the power it can? Vista? Windows 7?
 
SharkBait said:
I thought his name was QX6700RULZ... :confused::p

I don't think XP will have any performance increase with a quad core, but Vista might and 7 will.
Click to expand...

The os feels smoother. Meaning you can have more programs open at the same time without slowing down your pc.
 
If it's the same price, go for the Quad. It'll be better in the long run when games & other applications are written to use all 4 cores
 
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