Buy DDR2 ram? or new Motherboard and DDR3 ram?

Question

Me and my uncle are computer builders and he gave this motherboard because he got a new one.
My issue here is that this motherboard takes DDR2 ram. I don't see anything wrong with DDR2 ram but people say that DDR3 is better because its faster.

What do you think? I like this motherboard because it has 1 PCIe x1 slot a PCIe x16 slot and 2 PCI slots. Many of the motherboards that take DDR3 now don't have this exact configuration. I plan on playing games on this motherboard but should I get a DDR3 motherboard because its faster? The only game i'll probably will ever play is Minecraft.

Should I use this motherboard and buy DDR2 ram?- $80

Or should I buy a new DDR3 motherboard and get DDR3 ram?- $160

Answer 1

Go with ddr3

Most people now a days go with DDR3 because

it's not very expencive and more boards support

it as well as the later CPUs and GPU setups etc.

Regardless of this though, I have (kinda slow)

800MHz DDR2 RAM in an otherwise high

performance rig with a six-core at 4.0GHz and

two GTX 260s, and have no issues playing all the

latest games.

There is a big difference however when it comes

to things like rendering or converting video. That

type of process works so much faster with say

1333MHz or 1600MHz DDR3 than on my DDR2

setup.

An example..

I encrypted a 500GB hard drive. I had an X3 CPU

at the time, with 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM. The

encryption took 9 hours to complete.

A friend of mine also had a X3 CPU at similar

speeds, and he only had 4GB of RAM, but his was

1333MHz DDR3 RAM. He also wanted to encrypt

a 500GB hard drive but it only too him 4 hours.

So really, if you're after games and performance

computing I would suggest getting the DDR3 RAM,

but if you don't mind falling behind in a few

aspects such as loading times and rendering etc -

DDR2 is still perfectly good as long as you have

enough of it to go around.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Go with DDR2, do not get suckered in to paying more for DDR3, you won't notice the difference. I know this with personal experience. People will tell to get DDR3 because they see the specs on paper and automatically assume that there going to be a huge performance increase but there's not.

Answer 3

F u have a 500$ get a new motherboard so u won't have to upgrade it in the near future I got a 500$ pc and I play games on med-high and some on ultra

Answer 4

Going for a DDR3 motherboard means that it has more features, thus going for a new mobo and RAM is better....

Answer 5

stick with what you got.



RAM speed wont make much of a diffrence, if you have a good graphics card the system RAM wont be used because the graphics card has it's own RAM that it will store the data in and use.

Answer 6

dude if ur only playing minecraft then you're computer is fine. generally u can play that game with onboard graphics

Answer 7

If you build computers for a living then we should be asking you the hardware questions.

Answer 8

If money is no problem, go for DDR3

Answer 9

You shound pick DDR3.