Vista - pc broke :/

I managed to break my computer last week so had to take it to get it repaired.

Seems its the motherboard. So Ive taken this opportunity to upgrade to DDR3. Thing is its an Intel referance board and the ram is kingston.

Anyone got any thoughts on those?

Really Kingston...

Did you already buy it?

My first thought is what led you to believe that DDR3 is an upgrade over DDR2? Yes, DDR3 operates at a higher frequency; but, does that automatically translate into better performance? No.

Not actually as yet but its all that this company stocks

higher fsb lead me to believe that it was faster.

Research and buying via the internet is your best bet...

FSB and DRAM speeds are independent of each other. I have no clue how the i7's will perform; however, as far as the Core line goes, they're not like Athlons in that performance depends on running RAM and FSB synchronously. Intels don't really benefit or lose out if you're not running in sync.

The RAM you have is badass. Since it's latency is lower than any DDR3 you can find, you should consider sticking with it... at least until DDR3 prices and latency comes down, which won't be long.

Can you stick ddr2 ram into ddr3 slots then?

Nope

fumz is correct, running RAM frequecies much higher than the FSB shows little or no performance boost (currently on c2d & c2q rigs) i find tighter timings while managing to keep the stock frequency gives much performance. i.e....

800mhz @ 4-4-4-12 is better than 1100mhz @ 5-5-5-15

DDR3 frequencies reaching 1600mhz at something like 7-7-7-24 will not give you better performance on current tech.

with the addition of new motherboards in the near future DDR3 will come into its own, especially considering ''coreI7'' will only take DDR3 (i think), but DDR2 is in its prime right now.

SK

I can see my next upgrade in a couple of years being i7.