Standard vs Ballistix? Part II

[gsmoke19]

The most current version of Rob's mysuperpc recommends a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard. This motherboard supports up to 16mb of RAM (DDR2 1366+)...

Is it better to go with 4x1GB Ballistix, 2x2GB (if it exists) Ballistix, or 16GB of standard memory?

I have noticed that you all recommend 1gb ballistix over 1gb standard, but would having 4 times the ram (16gb standard) make up for the slower speed?

In other words, How much standard memory would it take to match the performance of Ballistix memory (if that's even possible)?

Thanks

[The Wise Monkey]

It all depends on the timings and frequency of the RAM - you can theoretically overclock the standard RAM to the same timings as the ballistix, but you cannot guarantee stability.

You will never need more than about 4GB unless you are doing very layer-intensive photoshop work or have 500 internet tabs open at the same time, all playing Youtube videos. :)

If the ballistix is too expensive, you can always go for a cheaper brand like Corsair, OCZ or G-Skill. If the timings are the same, there will be no difference in terms of performance.

[Rob]

I've got some studies on my RAM page which you mind find helpful.

http://www.mysuperpc.com/ram.shtml

But it depends on the RAM you're considering and how you use your computer. Sometimes more RAM is more important than faster RAM. Sometimes faster RAM is more important than more RAM.

RAM is really cheap nowadays, so it's not unusual to just go with plenty of the fastest RAM.