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I'm putting a new mb/processor in a pc I had built for handling the new Band In A Box with real drums and other sampled instruments. I noticed in the mb book that I need DDR2 1066 [AM2+] 800/667/533/400. This is 240 pin ram. Those buss speed numbers at the end of the ram descripiton are the question. It is conceivable that at some point I might add some other audio or sampling app to this PITA pc so my question is do I really need the fastest buss speed for audio applications like softsynts or the like? I assume that the 800 ram would cost more than the 400. I'd like to put as little money in this box as possible as I want to add Mach 5 to my mac.

You wouldn't need more than 800 MHz speed, what you should consider is the amount, but remember that 32bit OS's won't let you use more than 3,2 gb.
If i may, i would advise you to go for intel processor.

Thanks, 800 is what I'm ordering. But it's too late I already have a 2.7gHz Athalon chip and a ASATA2 ready mb. Just going with four gigabytes of ram for now. I'm just using it to run the new Biab with audio samples. A fairly light load as far as audio is concerned. I'm going to spring for Mach 5 and have to limit my pc spending.

Thanks for the help

Ron

guitron45 wrote:I noticed in the mb book that I need DDR2 1066 [AM2+] 800/667/533/400. This is 240 pin ram. Those buss speed numbers at the end of the ram descripiton are the question. It is conceivable that at some point I might add some other audio or sampling app to this PITA pc so my question is do I really need the fastest buss speed for audio applications like softsynts or the like? I assume that the 800 ram would cost more than the 400.

Yes, you'd think that DDR2 400 would be cheaper than DDR2 800, wouldn't you? Interestingly this is usually not the case. With PC technology, once one there is less demand for a given specification component, less of it is made and the price rises. It's all about volume. The higher the demand for the component, the more is made and the cheaper it is. For instance, I would be pretty sure that the DDR2 800 memory would be much cheaper than say DDR2 533, because demand has dropped off for that speed of memory. Also, keep in mind that memory bandwidth is important. You don't want to bottle-neck an otherwise speedy PC with poor memory performance. These days, RAM is a commodity. It's not worth screwing around with poor quality memory. The good stuff is only moderately more expensive than the not so good stuff. And as I mentioned, the higher speed stuff is probably cheaper than the slow stuff.