Can you tell me what makes high quality RAM?

[athlonator]

I keep reading that one should use Crucial or Micron or other xyz brand of RAM for best perormance.

I have a little knowledge of how computer chips are fabricated.

My question is basically, why are some brands regarded over others. In my understanding you
can't hack up a stick of RAM in your backyard. There is a requirement of a fabrication process to
make RAM chips. These "fabrication machines", unlike RAM are not made by that many manufacturers.

So other than the color and type of the board on which the chips are set, and the thickness or type of
interconnects used, what make two identically specified RAM sticks from two manufacturers
different, so much so as to give differing benchmark scores?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Overall quality of the materials.
Cheap PCB materials yeilds crappy PCBs

How much the designers of the PCBs took into accound the routing of the traces on the PCBs

The ICs used

The thickness of the gold plating

the quality of the solder and soldering

the tolerances of the coupling caps, or if they even exist

....and the list goes on and on...


(if given the parts I could build a stick of RAM in my garage 🙂)

 

[athlonator]

No, no, my question is the fabrication of the ram IC chips themselves, with the PCB and interconnects as a different issue.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Largely the same things, replace "PCB" with "substrate" and "chips" with "silicon" and you're well on your way 🙂

Think of an IC as a board in a box w/ a bunch of parts encased in epoxy. That's not too far off from what an IC actually is.

 

[ttn1]

RAM chips are just like any other chips. The ones we know best are processors. When Intel or AMD put out a new processor, they produce them all in the same way on a wafer of silicon. Once a wafer of chips is produced, they are cut apart and tested. Some are better than others so they are sorted into groups of similar performance. This is why chip companies release ranges of processor speeds, instead of just releasing one speed. If yields are good, you meet or exceed your specs on a majority of them. Sometimes to meet quotas of parts you have to downgrade good parts to a lower speed rating. These are the ones that make great overclockers.

Now what makes a really good stick of RAM is as was said before about PCBs, but also you need good chips that will run as fast or faster than you want. By accepting only the best chips, you pretty much gaurantee that you have a high quality stick of RAM.