Low Profile, 16 chip vs 8 chip.

[GhandiInstinct]

Can someone explain to me the difference between 16 chip and 8 chip memory technology. They call 16 chip low profile and 8 chip high profile, or low density/high density, my customers are returning a lot of 8 chip memory because their computers won't even boot up with them and sometimes give them kernal errors.

 

[Matthias99]

This is not really HT. If you search in the General Hardware forum you will probably find more information (assuming the search function works at all right now.)

It has to do with how many actual RAM chips are used in the memory module. For instance, a "512MB" RAM module could consist of either eight 64MB (8x512Mb) chips, or 16 32MB (16x256Mb) chips.

The memory controllers on some motherboards (usually in older laptops, or very old desktops using non-DDR SDRAM) can only deal with low-density modules properly.

 

[GhandiInstinct]

So if the chip count doesn't dictate what is low-density or high-density, what does dictate this?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: GhandiInstinct
So if the chip count doesn't dictate what is low-density or high-density, what does dictate this?

This is still not HT material. Please post in GH and/or search.

The chip count is what determines low/high density, AFAIK. Some older systems (mostly laptops at this point) also may be limited to how big a module they can take.

 

[aj654987]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
This is not really HT. If you search in the General Hardware forum you will probably find more information (assuming the search function works at all right now.)

It has to do with how many actual RAM chips are used in the memory module. For instance, a "512MB" RAM module could consist of either eight 64MB (8x512Mb) chips, or 16 32MB (16x256Mb) chips.

The memory controllers on some motherboards (usually in older laptops, or very old desktops using non-DDR SDRAM) can only deal with low-density modules properly.

I used to have an AMD slot A athlon system that was very picky with ram. It needed the lower density modules because it was using the very first chipset (made by amd themselves) for the slot A platform and that chipset couldnt handle the high density memory. Took me forever to figure out that was the issue when I was trying to upgrade its ram.