Mac pro 3.1 Ram upgrade...

[Cactusface]

Hi All,
It seems that my first upgrade (I've already added 2 x SSD's) is adding more memory. Should I pay a little extra and add another 8Gb of 800MHz Ram making 16Gb or buy 16 Gb of the cheaper 667MHz server ram, which seems quite common on eBay? My machine is a 3.1 and has 2 x 2.8GHz cpu's.

Also what would be the best arrangement! I think 4 x 4Gb leaves me with free slots for later, should I want more. do you share the ram modules between the 2 ram cards? as I have seen some Mac pro's offered on eBay with only one ram card!!

Any ideas?
Regards

Mel.

 

[IowaLynn]

Using all 8 DIMM slots offers 17% improvement based on Barefeats test in 2008 while using 667MHz has a 4% "penalty."

What apps you use, whether you are limited by memory (seems you have helped free up being disk-based I/O bound) and whether and how much memory will help would only be guessing.

16GB though should help. But 6x2GB might be as much and as cheap as you need to go.

PCIe flash-based SSDs that offer 800MB/sec write, or above, are the new darlings of storage devices (ideally would mean using slot #2 to place adapter).