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Acer Ferrari 3200, 1024mb PC2700 vs 2 x 512mb PC3200?

post #1 of 9
3/9/05 at 5:46pm
Thread Starter 
Hi Folks,

Couldn't find this thread, though I am sure it has been asked a million times. My F3200 (now it sounds like a sports car!) still has 2x256 original pc 2700, but it has struggled on a few things (doom, v.jerky, O/C'd 1950mhz just for playing and graphics tweaked to 486/250) on lowest quality setting, still tends too freeze up once every hour or so.
I am wondering whether it is worth going to the expense of taking out both sticks, to replace with 3200, or just stick in 1 1024mb stick of 2700?

Any thoughts, also where to buy it.
The second question is performance vs price? I am not a massive gamer, I can see it needs it for doom ( and a faster hard drive, will wait for a reasonably priced 80gb 7200rpm...) but I will be doing a lot of photo editing with Adobe CS.
P.S. I also have DVD Idle so some extra ram will be usefull for that.

Snorre, just read again the review about performance increases dependent on amount of ram, well after 512mb, it seems all a bit academic, no?
P.P.S. If anyone has some 512mb sticks they would like to donate.......
(Based in England, but will buy in U.S. if they will ship...)

Nik F3200 My baby is hot and you know it
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post #2 of 9
3/10/05 at 2:17am
go with PC2700. I believe you can't obtain the speed of PC3200 anyhow and it is a waste of money.
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post #3 of 9
3/14/05 at 5:43pm
i have 2.512mb corsair xms3200 ddr400 ram in my ferrari.... runs fine.. full 200mhz ... loads of people with the f3200 have 1GB PC3200 ram running fine with no reduction to PC2700

ive played doom3 using my f3200 with no problems.. even with the stock 2x256mb ram and no jerkyness... my settings were all normal... 1800mhz cpu and gpu at 450/230 never had a problem... apart from loading times but thats due to the slow hard drive and memory, surely some other f3200 owners will say the same
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post #4 of 9
3/15/05 at 7:02pm
Upgrading you ram can make a good amout of diffence in a few games like HL2 and Doom3 as well as running certain programs that are memory intensive. Heres a break down of why it makes a difference. XP uses a minimum of 256mb by itself not including any programs that you might be running in the background. My Ferrari uses about 450 - 500mb of ram on idle. Then you launch steam and you're up to about 600mb. The you launch CS:S, HL2, or HL2 DM and you're going to use between 750 - 900mb. So you see having 1gb of ram makes a difference because w/ out enough ram you computer has to cache the memory onto you HD which is only 4200rpm stock so you will notice a stutter or "lag" in certain games even though the video card should be able to handle it. In Photoshop you will notice that the program will slow down if you have a lot of Hi-res pics open or you're just working with a lot of things at the same time.
I chose quantity over overall bandwidth so I go a gig stick of PC2700. I plan to upgrade to a full 2gb in the summer so getting the 1gb of XMS was out of the question for me. Had corsair offered a 1gb stick of XMS PC3200 I would've jumped on it.

The short answer, yes extra ram makes a difference.
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post #5 of 9
3/15/05 at 8:50pm
Thread Starter 
[quote=NightHawk7]Upgrading you ram can make a good amout of diffence in a few games like HL2 and Doom3 as well as running certain programs that are memory intensive. Heres a break down of why it makes a difference. XP uses a minimum of 256mb by itself not including any programs that you might be running in the background. My Ferrari uses about 450 - 500mb of ram on idle. Then you launch steam and you're up to about 600mb. The you launch CS:S, HL2, or HL2 DM and you're going to use between 750 - 900mb. So you see having 1gb of ram makes a difference because w/ out enough ram you computer has to cache the memory onto you HD which is only 4200rpm


Yeah, this does explain the lag on Doom, and possibly a complete freeze at times too. Mostly H2 was OK, but Doom definately suffers.


I chose quantity over overall bandwidth so I go a gig stick of PC2700. I plan to upgrade to a full 2gb in the summer so getting the 1gb of XMS was out of the question for me. Had corsair offered a 1gb stick of XMS PC3200 I would've jumped on it.

Since I am now pennyless until July, I won't be putting any ram in until then. Maybe Corsair will have 1 Gig sticks by then. As to whether any Laptop is worth quite so much additional expense I am not sure. In 2 years we will all be left with outdated, but overall incredibly expensive laptops. 2 Gigs of expensive ram will seem very extravagant.

Having said that, my first computer is sitting beside me and it still has the original DVD/ROM drive in it, I still use it to download from Limewire and virus check the programs! (5 year old Patriot celeron 433, go figure...)
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post #6 of 9
3/16/05 at 9:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by NightHawk7
My Ferrari uses about 450 - 500mb of ram on idle. Then you launch steam and you're up to about 600mb. The you launch CS:S, HL2, or HL2 DM and you're going to use between 750 - 900mb.
your ferrari really uses a lot of ram on idle... my ferrari on idle uses around 250-280mb and when i launch steam and play HL2, CSS, HL2 DM it uses about 350 to 450mb....
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post #7 of 9
3/16/05 at 12:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by speedmunky
your ferrari really uses a lot of ram on idle... my ferrari on idle uses around 250-280mb and when i launch steam and play HL2, CSS, HL2 DM it uses about 350 to 450mb....



Yes, but we all know you have 1 Gig of Super-Duper-Mega-Ram!
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post #8 of 9
3/16/05 at 12:54pm
haha yep
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post #9 of 9
3/16/05 at 7:08pm
When you add more ram, XP will scale up and use a little more. Also I run a few programs in the background but I don't think they take up more than 100mb. What I'm running right now is:
Objectdock
Rainmeter
Rainlender
Windowblinds
PC-Cillin

Those are what I run on idle.

[Edit] after uninstalling a few unecessary printer drivers and some other things, my computer is using about 420mb or ram on idle
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