Rocky Posted February 23, 2004 Share Posted February 23, 2004 Anyone clued up about RAM? I have figured out that I have SDRAM, and that SDRAM is pretty much at the bottom end of the scale - but what other types of RAM are there, and how do you know what RAM works with which mobo, and also which is the best type of RAM, (probably the most expensive). A link to a decent tutorial would be cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYR_32 Posted February 23, 2004 Share Posted February 23, 2004 Tutorial? Bah!!! Ok SD-RAM is an older type of RAM....its Bus speeds are fairly low...like you said...bottom of the scale...there is alos another type of RAM....RD which early Pentium 4 chipsets supported...at the introduction of the P4 the only kind of RAM you could use was RD...that was later changed as the price of RD is very high...Intel said that RD was a faster type of memory...however DDR ram...which was more main stream was eventually supported by the Intel Chipsets....its classifed like as "PC####" DDR...for example I run 512MB's of DDR which id PC2700-- PC2700 ram runs at 333mhz...PC 3200 Runs at 400mhz...the higher the "PC####" is the faster the bus speed of the ram is...to when buying a mobo just check what sppeds it supports and you can install up to the highest speed of ram listed.... ie my mobo supports up to 333mhz...which equals PC2700...most new mobos support PC3200 (400mhz)... the faster the ram however the higher the price....did that make sense? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReconSnake Posted February 23, 2004 Share Posted February 23, 2004 I read this one at Tom's about a week ago - some good stuff in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
en4rcment Posted February 23, 2004 Share Posted February 23, 2004 Also Rocky... If your going to use the memory in a gaming rig (and I know you are ) when selecting memory you may want to choose one with a lower CAS Latency. Most of the newest memory has a CAS Latency of 3, 2.5, or 2. The lower the better (faster) but also more expensive... Most of the memory websites have a nice section explaining CAS Latency. If that fails just google it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurFACE Posted February 23, 2004 Share Posted February 23, 2004 http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.html?i=1849 Article is over the summer 02 but a good read. I suggest that if you buy RAM get CLS 2.5 or 2. Most mobo today are using DDR so you can't go wrong the only other option is RAMBUS, and it's to expensive. Your motherboard will site will give you information of which memory to purchase. I believe getting a mobo that has a good website with helpful self support as well as tech support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted February 23, 2004 Author Share Posted February 23, 2004 Crikey it's even more complex that I thought. I check out those 2 posted links, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteKnight77 Posted February 24, 2004 Share Posted February 24, 2004 Crikey it's even more complex that I thought. I check out those 2 posted links, thanks! I'll make it easy for ya Rocky. Get 2 sticks of low latency 512MB PC3200. I know what you have in mind and all the RAM won't hurt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
en4rcment Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 I'll make it easy for ya Rocky. Get 2 sticks of low latency 512MB PC3200. I know what you have in mind and all the RAM won't hurt. He's right. That's 1Gb of excellent memory. You'll need it for gaming... I'll also be purchasing 2 sticks of PC3200 (512mb) within the next few days... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NightCrawler Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 I'm in the process of checking out new PC parts also Rocky so I'm glad you're beating these guys for info... Now to my question. I was told by someone I trust, to get Geil Golden Dragon PC3500, found it yesterday at NewEgg for 113.00 for a full 1024mb. My question is all of you said to go with PC3200 why not PC 3500? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannik Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 PC3200 is clocked to run at 400mHz, while PC3500 runs at 433mHz. Very few motherboards support 433 at this time, so practically speaking, PC3200 is the defacto "fast" DDR on the market. That said, RAM is backwards compatible in the sense that as long as it's all DDR, you can run PC3500 at 433, 400, 333, 266, 200, etc.* PC3500 running at 400mHz essentially becomes PC3200, with the ability to run faster when you upgrade your motherboard down the road. * You can go backwards in speed, but I don't recommend trying to go forwards, i.e. sticking PC2100 into a PC3200-set slot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted February 25, 2004 Author Share Posted February 25, 2004 PC3200 is clocked to run at 400mHz, while PC3500 runs at 433mHz. Very few motherboards support 433 at this time, so practically speaking, PC3200 is the defacto "fast" DDR on the market. That said, RAM is backwards compatible in the sense that as long as it's all DDR, you can run PC3500 at 433, 400, 333, 266, 200, etc.* PC3500 running at 400mHz essentially becomes PC3200, with the ability to run faster when you upgrade your motherboard down the road. * You can go backwards in speed, but I don't recommend trying to go forwards, i.e. sticking PC2100 into a PC3200-set slot. If I read that very fast I get a sore head. Funnily enough even if I read it slow my head still hurts. Infact, can you just post "get this" plus the componant from now on Dannik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WickedWeasel Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 I'll make it easy for ya Rocky. Get 2 sticks of low latency 512MB PC3200. I know what you have in mind and all the RAM won't hurt. Windows will only acknowledge 512 at one time, having more than that for gaming will do absolutely nothing for you. The only time that more memory is used or needed is for like web design etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurFACE Posted February 25, 2004 Share Posted February 25, 2004 Here are some articles that I read last summer but still may have some value. http://www.anandtech.com/memory/index.html You will see information concerning test and most value. Rocky, you should be able to get your own opinion after reading material. http://www.anandtech.com/memory/index.html..._SECTIONDO=list Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannik Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 Windows will only acknowledge 512 at one time, having more than that for gaming will do absolutely nothing for you. The only time that more memory is used or needed is for like web design etc. This is somewhat incorrect. The actual breakdown is: Windows 95: 1GB Windows 98: 1GB Windows 98SE: 1GB Windows ME: 1.5GB Windows NT: 4GB Windows 2000 Professional: 4GB Windows 2000 Advanced Server: 4GB or 8GB with PAE enabled Windows 2000 Datacenter Server: 4GB or 64GB with PAE enabled Windows XP Home: 4GB Windows XP Professional: 4GB Certainly, excess RAM can cause performance issues, but when you consider that XP's own memory footprint is close to 128 megs out of the box, a gig of RAM is actually rather sensible. The 512 meg limit you may be thinking of was a performance-based concern with Windows 95, 98 & ME. They would suffer some errors (which were correctable in the system.ini) when more than 512 megs of RAM were installed. This hasn't been an issue with the NT kernel that NT, W2K and XP are based on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WickedWeasel Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 This is somewhat incorrect Sorry, but you are wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted February 26, 2004 Author Share Posted February 26, 2004 This is somewhat incorrect Sorry, but you are wrong. You are going to have to qualify that statement WW, simply saying someone is wrong doesn't carry much wieght. The comment about webpage design is a little confusing too, you can design a webpage with 128Mb RAM, or less, it's not memory intensive at all.... so I dunno what you meant by that either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted February 26, 2004 Author Share Posted February 26, 2004 Here are some articles that I read last summer but still may have some value. Nice one, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Ranger Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 Actually WW, Dannik is right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteKnight77 Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 Let's all try to help Rocky and not ARGUE about how much RAM is good. I don't want to have to lock the bosses thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WickedWeasel Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 hush, nobody arguing here. I was wrong. He was right...it only pertained to older OS systems. I got my info from someone I thought was a PC guru......Geeze...and I had bought 2 sticks of 512 for my new pc and he talked me out of it. SAo yes, I was somewhat wrong. But wrong...sorry. I feel dumb now...wont open my mouth again unless I know for a fact. What I was talking about Rocky on the web design thing....there are alot of memory/cpu intensive programs used for webdesign/flash/shockwave.....not the normal stuff....the stuff the pros use that takes alot of memory.....ok, I am going back to practice some more GR....I suck lately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted February 26, 2004 Author Share Posted February 26, 2004 @WW. That's the worst thing, someone telling you something with 100% confidence, and taking that advice at face value and posting it on. I think we've all been caught out at one time or another by dopes like that. Luckily we have alot of people around here that do know what they aretalking about, and a very low ratio of bull######ters And yeh you are right, some of the high-end web stuff does need alot of processing power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurFACE Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 Rocky, You have a better understanding of DDR now? MSI makes dual DDR easy with manual and color slots for DDR. You simply put one in each different slot for dual. Anandtech did a test and decided that if you ran dual memory using all 4 slots best performance. The link is in the thread may have to do some sorting through all anandtech memory links. Good Luck http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20...0119/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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