Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Which Is Better - 800mhz Ram Retailers

M

Mr.PS

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 8, 2008
528
9
$245 for 4 sticks of 1gb - Memory America
http://eshop.macsales.com/basketHandler.cfm?do=updateBasket

$220 for 2 sticks of 2gb - Other World Computing
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

Which one should I go for? I heard that more sticks = less latency and better performance. I have 2gb (2x 1gb) of the stock ram coming with my Mac Pro on Monday.

Any opinions, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Also, has anyone here dealt with Memory America? Can they be trusted? I have never heard of them before.
 
Matched pairs will be your best bet... I also got the stock 2gb with mine (2x1gb sticks) and added six more 1GB sticks from OWC... Should be ideal, 1GB per core, all matched... NICE!

So, to answer your question... I would go with the 1GB sticks so everyone plays nice together
 
Mr.PS said:
I heard that more sticks = less latency and better performance. I have 2gb (2x 1gb) of the stock ram coming with my Mac Pro on Monday.

Any opinions, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Not quite. With FB-DIMMS like the Mac Pro uses, more memory modules equal higher latency but higher bandwidth. That being said, you would probably not notice the increased latency, and it will definitely be faster than the system paging out to the hard disk. You should try to have two matched pairs in A1, A2; B1, B2. (where A and B are the memory risers, and 1 and 2 are the memory slots closest to the motherboard.

I got 4 x 1GB with Apple, and ordered 4 x 2GB from transintl. The transintl RAM should be here tomorrow, although I have no Mac Pro yet.:confused::eek::eek: The 8 GB kit was $380 and was definitely the best price out there.
 
OWC sent me an email saying the Netlist RAM has been delayed. I really don't want to buy just the Qualified RAM. Anyone else in this boat?

"Although we had expected to ship your order by this time, due to ongoing delays at Netlist - this product still remains unavailable. Netlist notified us late last night that a key component required for their build was determined to be defective. This Netlist component problem has now pushed their ETA for delivering these Mac Pro 800MHz modules back about 10 days. Assuming there are no additional delays, we now expect to be able to ship this Netlist product by approximately February 3rd."
 
Mr.PS said:
$245 for 4 sticks of 1gb - Memory America
http://eshop.macsales.com/basketHandler.cfm?do=updateBasket

$220 for 2 sticks of 2gb - Other World Computing
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

Which one should I go for? I heard that more sticks = less latency and better performance. I have 2gb (2x 1gb) of the stock ram coming with my Mac Pro on Monday.

Any opinions, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Also, has anyone here dealt with Memory America? Can they be trusted? I have never heard of them before.
Click to expand...

I went with the 2X2GB OWC. I have the ram (no Mac Pro yet) and it looks well constructed with very nice heat spreaders.
 
deathshrub said:
Not quite. With FB-DIMMS like the Mac Pro uses, more memory modules equal higher latency but higher bandwidth. That being said, you would probably not notice the increased latency, and it will definitely be faster than the system paging out to the hard disk. You should try to have two matched pairs in A1, A2; B1, B2. (where A and B are the memory risers, and 1 and 2 are the memory slots closest to the motherboard.

I got 4 x 1GB with Apple, and ordered 4 x 2GB from transintl. The transintl RAM should be here tomorrow, although I have no Mac Pro yet.:confused::eek::eek: The 8 GB kit was $380 and was definitely the best price out there.
Click to expand...

So it won't matter if I get 2 x 2gb of 4 x 1gb?

The slots look like this

first card second card
- -
- -
- -
- -


the first row will be filled with 1gb sticks from apple, the 2nd row would be filled with 2gb sticks, or the 2nd and 3rd row would be filled with
 
I just placed an order for the OWC 4gb kit (2 x 2gb). This will give me a total of 6gb of ram. This should be fairly sufficient for a good while - for me at least.
 
Been reading this on bearfeats.com

Some of you just want to buy two 2GB FB-DIMMs to add to the two factory 1GB FB-DIMMs for a total of 6GB. That configuration will slow you down. Don't do it. Again, the BEST performance setup is eight matched FB-DIMMs. The second best is four matched FB-DIMMs.
Click to expand...

This is the configuration I received from my dealer...is this really a bad config? :rolleyes:

Also noticed last night that the MP only recognizes 2 Gb, maybe it's because the dealer put the DIMM's in the wrong slots.
I have not my MP at hand now but I thought they put the DIMMS in like this:

Card1:
1Gb
2Gb
-
-

Card 2:
1 Gb
2 Gb
-
-

What I understand from what í've been reading elsewhere is that 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 slots always should have the same amount of memory, so i guess it will have to be like this:

Card1:
1Gb
1Gb
-
-

Card 2:
2 Gb
2 Gb
-
-

(gonna try it out later). :cool:
 
I just ran Xbench before and after I installed the 2 x 2gb sticks from OWC. The results are near identical, give or take a few. This leads me to believe 6gb (2 x 1gb and 2 x 2gb) is a very good setup! :)

Before:
Results 181.23
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B2117)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WDC WD3200AAJS-41VWA0
Memory Test 181.23
System 215.28
Allocate 345.66 1.27 Malloc/sec
Fill 170.22 8276.43 MB/sec
Copy 193.51 3996.79 MB/sec
Stream 156.49
Copy 157.75 3258.34 MB/sec
Scale 158.07 3265.64 MB/sec
Add 155.31 3308.52 MB/sec
Triad 154.87 3313.09 MB/sec

After:
Results 199.89
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B2117)
Physical RAM 6144 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WDC WD3200AAJS-41VWA0
Memory Test 199.89
System 279.47
Allocate 322.17 1.18 Malloc/sec
Fill 232.30 11294.94 MB/sec
Copy 300.67 6210.23 MB/sec
Stream 155.58
Copy 156.79 3238.53 MB/sec
Scale 157.50 3254.00 MB/sec
Add 154.37 3288.36 MB/sec
Triad 153.73 3288.58 MB/sec
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back