8gig 800Mhz or 4gig 1066Mhz?

Would it be better to get 8gig of 800Mhz DDR2 ram or 4gig of 1066Mhz DDR2 ram?

My motherboard supports both and for about the same price i could go with either option, what would be the better choice?

More RAM doesn't equal faster. You only need enough RAM to run an application and 2 or 3GB is plenty for most games. I don't know of any game that goes over 3gb with minimum background apps running. When you don't have enough RAM for an APP then you start having to swap files off the hard drive and thats where things slow down.

Its kind of like putting a bigger gas tank in your car and expecting it to go faster when you put 8GBs of RAM in a computer.

I'm building a new computer soon and right now i have 2gig of ram and that is barely enough to run new games on vista ultimate, so i'm looking at getting atleast 4gig in my new computer. After the release of DDR3 RAM, DDR2 RAM has become very cheap so i could get 4gig of 1066Mhz ram for about $300. For about the same price i could get 8gig of 800Mhz ram. My question is would i be better off getting 4gig at 1066Mhz of just go with the 8gig of 800Mhz (regardless of how much overkill 8gig is)mattisgod01

Which will be faster? Chances are, you will not feel a difference. Unless you are only benchmarking, the 4gig of 1066mhz RAM will actually come out on top. Also, fine tuning your timings and OCing your RAM with just 2 slots(I'm assuming you'll take a 2x2GB module here) may be much alot easier than a 4 slot config.

Of course, if you are thinking about being future proofed.... well, its a somewhat tricky decission to make. But before 8GB of RAM even has its uses, Vista will not be here already and the mass consumer market would have already went onto the faster DDR3 instead. If I were you, I'd pick a pair of2x2GB of high-performance RAM and OC the hell out of it.

2 gigs is probably sufficient, if you need it 4 gigs is more then enough, and as far as i know all DDR2 moduels over 800mhz are just overclocked, so if you really want 1066 ram, just grab some good 800mhz ram and overclock it, your timmings may be hurting abit, but if you are running intel clockspeed will make a bigger differance then timmings. (and it is next to nothing in real world apps)

EDIT: also, unless you are running a 64 bit os, you wont even utilize the 4 gigs you put in, let alone 8.