Building a new system with an Asus A7N8X-E and Athlon 3200.

I am putting together a fairly cheap second computer, since my cousin has upgraded his system he gave me this mobo and cpu for a fair price.
I will use it for playing games on a network and storage of files.

I have looked at parts and have these in mind:

Maxtor 6Y080L0 Plus 9 80GB 7200rpm UDMA133 - OEM (IDE)
LG GSA4163 16X DVD Dual Layer R/RW/RAM Internal IDE (Beige) - OEM
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 PRO 128 MB DDR 8x AGP DVi & TV-Out

The only thing I am unsure of is my RAM. Right now I have 2 sticks of samsung PC2700 RAM. I think it would be fine for general use but gaming would be difficult. I want to know if I would see a good increase in performance with 2 sticks of PC3200 RAM in dual channel mode?

Thanks.

 

My motherboard dropp thed default speed of my ram to 333 from 400mhz DDR when I installed two more sticks of 512mb.

I've yet to notice a difference in games running 2gb at PC2700 vs. PC3200.

 

Ive got 1GB of PC3200, and i notice NO difference at ALL, with speeds between PC2100, PC2700, or PC3200.... although i could BARELY notice MAYBE, a 1 FPS gain with the PC3200 from the PC2100.

 

Sorry, forgot to add it's 2 sticks of PC2700 512MB samsung ram.

 

You wont be able to notice a difference, dont spend the extra cash.

 

Well that Depends, who can say what you can notice, It will also depend on the task at hand!

This would be key here, What speed is your CPU 333 or 400Mhz?

If you have 400Mhz cpu then get the Ram to match, pc3200, best performance is achived when cpu & memory are running at same speed!
It's dual channel MOBO, I go for dual channel mem kit & yes run in dual mode there is a small increase in performance, maybe 3% ta 5%
Another reason to go pc3200, probably can get for the same price as pc2700.
Most PC3200 is backwards compatitable, usually at lower CL.
I'd also get CL2.5 mem, or even lower, I see in your sig your other rig is OCed, which suggest's to me, you'll be tempted to OC this one, Once a Tweaker always Tweaker!

One other thought just take that ram out of your other Rig & try it in your Asus, will cost you nothing.

 

Well now you've really tempted me to get new ram asus.

I will just have to get some I suppose. If I'm going to build a new rig I might aswell build it properly.