Need quick answer: Does RDRAM NEED to be installed in IDENTICAL pairs

[EyeMWing]

Someone at Newegg is teh stupit, and I just quoted someone for some DDR that they had listed under Rambus. Needless to say, the price was exactly HALF, but I quoted them for two seperate modules.

So, I have a 0mb "filler" stick, can I just order one stick of RDRAM and toss in the filler? The RAM that's in there currently is:

1x PC700 128mb
1x 0mb

i'm proposing
1x PC800 512mb
1x 0mb

instead of the uber-expensive
2x PC800 256mb

 

[speed01]

I've found that if you are going to use 2 RIMMs they tend to not play well if they don't match.
If you are only using 1 RIMM then just throw in the blank and you should be fine.

Speed

 

[John]

Does RDRAM NEED to be installed in IDENTICAL pairs

I've seen a few Dell PC's where a single 16-bit rimm is used w/ a crimm. Most of the time the need to be identical pairs unless it's a 32-bit rimm module.

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: John

Does RDRAM NEED to be installed in IDENTICAL pairs

I've seen a few Dell PC's where a single 16-bit rimm is used w/ a crimm. Most of the time the need to be identical pairs unless it's a 32-bit rimm module.

That's exactly what this is - A Dimension XPS B1000. It traumatized me to open the thing up and see big ugly heatspreaders - I had never once imagined that I'd have to deal with this expensive crap. Although, I suppose that, since I get to keep the old stuff, I'll just buy a $4 CRIMM and a $50 CPU/MB combo and put it to some kind of use.

 

[John]

Upgrade Configuration
Dell Dimension XPS B-Series
System Specs

Type of system: Mini-Tower PC
Bus Architecture: PCI/AGP
Native OS: Windows 98/NT
CPU Type: Intel Pentium III 533MHz - 1GHz
Model Comments: Rambus PC800

Standard Memory: 128 MB (removable)
Maximum Memory: 512 MB
Memory Expansion: 2 sockets
Memory Comments: RDRAM

ECC and non ECC may be used in this machine. Mixing them will disable the ECC function