Is there any need to go greater than 800mhz, or use DDR3?

I never even realized that there was anything higher than 800 until I started browsing memory on newegg. Obviously, if customizing on Dell's website is the bulk of your experience, you might be led to believe that 800 is top-of-the-line.



But is there any need to go beyond 800, even for a moderate gaming PC? I'm wondering about the price/performance difference.



And while I'm talking about memory, is DDR3 even necessary right now? It seems too expensive, but I don't know if the performance justifies that.



Thanks.

If I am correct (someone correct me if I'm not), I would be more concerned about your video card and the amount of Random Access Memory you have. The speed of your memory is much less important than the amount. I would have at least 2 gigabytes of memory for most video games nowadays. PC2 6400 speeds aren't much different than PC2 4200 speeds from what I have read.



Double Data Rate 3 memory is too expensive right now compared to the performance it gives.

DDR2 800 is fine. I own 1066 (OC'd @ 1205), but I will admit that there isn't a noticable performance difference between the two. DDR3 speeds are faster, but the latencies/timings are much higher. The lower the better w/ regard to latencies. Motherboards that support DDR3 are also limited right now.



I would recommend this: Corsair 2GB

Thanks guys! And is there any harm with putting more than 3GB of RAM in right now, given that Windows doesn't seem to recognize any more? I figure if it's cheap enough, I might as well do it now.

But of course, having read that you must use two DIMMs in order to take advantage of dual channel, what does this mean for a system that can't recognize more than 3GB? Do at least 2GB run in dual channel, and then the third DIMM just runs by itself in a single channel?

No harm, but you need a 64 bit OS. No point in installing > 3GB in a 32bit system.



Yes. That's correct, I believe.

Thanks. I won't bother then. I think any games released to date won't need more than 2GB. And I plan to use XP instead of Vista anyway.

In that case, then yes, 2GB is plenty.

Cool. It's all starting to come together now.