Wich RAM should I go for?

Hey guys,



I'm building a system for a friend. see thread here. He wants 4 gigs of ram, so what do you think would be better?



Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5 (2x2gb) @ around $320 (5-5-5-18)

2x Corsair XMS2 2GB (2X1GB) PC6400 @ around $260 (4-4-4-12)



Now, with the two 2gb ram, dual-channel will be quite effective, but it has higher timings. Four 1gb ram has tighter timings and will also dual-channel, but there's four too put in and therefore slightly slow down overall performance (due to physical limitations). So what would be best? Any other suggestions?



thanks!

What is your friend going to use his computer for? Gaming?

Yup, lots and lots of gaming.

I would recommend going with the below OCZ memory:



OCZ Flex XLC 2 gigabyte (2 x 1 gigabyte) 240-Pin PC2-6400 Dual Channel Kit Desktop $121



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227190

ok I'll take that into consideration. But what about using two stick of 2gigs as opposed to four stick of 1gig?

I've heard some really good things about this Ram.



CORSAIR XMS2 4GB(4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Quad Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145178

You are unlikely to see much better performance with 4 gigabytes of memory versus two gigabytes. I would probably go with four gigabytes of memory so you will not have to buy more memory in the future.

Most current programs cannot utilize more than 3 gigabytes of memory as most software is built for a 32-bit operating system. But, in the future, when 64 bit software is available, the 4 gigabytes of memory will do some good.