My current PC has two sticks of PC3200 256 MB RAM for a total of 512 MB.

Down the road I want to put in two sticks in the other slots for an additional GB using two 512 sticks of PC3200 RAM.

Newegg has two different Corsair (good brand) of 512 MB PC3200 sticks.
The first runs at a latency of 2.5
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-026&depa=1

The other set runs at 3
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-479&depa=1

That is the only difference I see between the two sets.
How do I know which is better?
The RAM I have now is just generic PC3200 which I ordered with my present tower when I built it a few falls ago.

 

a good thing to do is have all the ram the same brand and speed. some times if you mix brands you will have issues. the ram on the first link would be what i would chose because of the cl of 2.5

 

Unfortunately I do not know the brand of the generic stuff I have now, but this new RAM is the same speed, PC3200 DDR 400.
Found a better link to a twin pack of the same stuff.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-440&depa=1

This is probably what I will end up with later on.

Yeah, I Googled CL earlier, and found out the lower the #, usually the better.

From reading the Newegg reviews on this RAM, most seem to like it, and said to pay no attention to the word "Value" in it.

1.5 Gigs of RAM should wake up my PC pretty good.
The 512 I have now is the bare minimum to get most tasks done.

 

get the 2.5, you wont notice a difference but the at the price of 50 cents or so more I'd just go with it...

 

get the 2.5, you wont notice a difference but the at the price of 50 cents or so more I'd just go with it...

 

yeah its good stuff for the price. to help me help you better what system is this ram for cpuid can help with matching up some ram

 

2.4c 865 chipset

 

are you still overclocking?

 

Yes, not with the Asus AI Booster though, but through the BIOS.
There is a setting in there for 5, 10, 20, and 30% over.
My temps are very low for being OC'd to 3.12.
Twin 120 mm fans blowing on the mobo help with that.

 

brand, speed, and CL can be mixed and matched without problems, thats the beauty of DDR.. you can run a stick of 3200 and a stick of 2100 if you really wanted to (as long as the board supports both modules), the 3200 slows itself down to match the 2100, therefore giving you more memory, but slowing you down overall. as for the CL timings, it's really only for overclocking the system bus, the lower the time the better. i'm very surprised your oc'ing with generic ram. for the price difference, get the CL2.5 stuff, or if you really want a performance machine look into finding high-performance memory of CL2.

 

I know people who have stability issuses with mixing ram. I have had problems with it to. also im getting 2.7ghz out of my fx-53 with crappy pc 3200

 

I use to OC it at 20% (2.88 GHz), but have had it at 3.12 now for several months without one glitch.

The Asus P4P800 is a very good board to OC the 478 Intel chips with.
So good I will probably get another P4P800 and a 3.2c GHz chip to put back into a new tower.

This current tower or a small form factor case will make a nice PVR for the living room, freeing up the new one so I do not have to PVR with it, letting me game more.