Different types of memory, whats the difference??

[Ricoche]

Whats the difference between a 32x8 and a 32x64 ram chips when they both are 256 mb each. I have been asked this a million times and I still don't know the answer since i can't find any source of information pretaining to this even on the web. All the sites I've visited that give detailed explanations of what memory axactly is, simply breeze over this point or not mention it at all. Can someone please clear this for me. Tell me as much as you can about it such as which is better and why? Thanks

 

[KillerCow]

err... I am confused.

32x8 = 256 Mb = 32 MB
32x64 = 2048 Mb = 256 MB

Typically, there are 3 numbers when dealing with ram moduals. Density, Width, and Rows.

If you had a modul made up of 8 4x16 modules, you would have 8*4*16 = 512 MegaBITS = 64 MegaBYTES

What probably has happened is that tha 32x8 modual has 8 32x8 chips on it, to make 256MegaBytes.
The other modual is probably exactly the same... except rather than market it as 32*8*8, they just labled it as 32*64. Crucial does that.

Take this Crucial part number: CT32M64S4D7E
32*64Mb = 256MB
The modual is not made with a single 32x64Mb DRAM chip, it has 8 32x8 or 16 32x4 or 16 16x8 chips.

Page 55 of the TX chipset reference has a table of it's supported widths and densities TX chipset.

 

[Ricoche]

Thanks man.. that makes perfect sense now. It fits all the stuff i've read about it so far that didn't make sense to me. Basically when they referred to chips, I thought they meant the entire ram stick and thats what confused the crap out of me. Anyway, I appreciate your help and thanks again.