ram question

[redlinejaxfl]

looking into buying/trading for ram upgrade. I understand that pc2100,pc3200 etc are speeds, but what are the other numbers on the ram telling me? DDr533 etc...???? also i see people mentioning single channel and dual channel ram? ive always used 2 sticks of 512.what s the difference in these? appriciate any info, learing as i go. Thanks!

 

[shoRunner]

ddr400 (pc3200) ddr333(pc2700)...etc are just another way to tell the speed. dual channel vs single channel is a 128bit bus vs a 64 bit bus. see http://www.kingston.com/newtech/MKF_520DDRwhitepaper.pdf for some more memory info

 

[redlinejaxfl]

thanks alot for the reply and all the info! somebody has to lead the blind, eh? haha

Thanks again, I'm going to check out that link!

Eli

 

[ts3433]

General rules:
Determine DDR___ rating by multiplying actual speed (in MHz) by 2 (effective clock rate, since information is sent twice per clock cycle).
Multiply DDR___rating by 8 to get PC____ rating (in GB/s, since it measures bandwidth).

Therefore, things like PC3200, DDR400, and 200MHz (used in the context of DDR memory) are all one and the same.

Whether or not you can use dual channel is up to your memory controller (chipset usually, but CPU on a K8-based system) and board if for some reason either one rejects some sticks for no reason. You need to have pairs of memory to use dual channel (any number of pairs up to the maximum number of sticks the controller supports is fine, though), though on NF2-based systems (where dual channel makes no difference unless you use the NF2 IGP integrated GF4MX graphics) I think you can do some weird 3-stick dual channel with, say, 2x256MB and 1x512MB.

 

[redlinejaxfl]

Cool.yea i think my current board will accept 3 sticks.they all have to be th same speed though correct? like your example of 2x256, the third stick would have to be a 512, correct? and if i understand correctly they all have to have matching speeds? Also I have habit of using 2xof whatever memory i have, so the two stick are what they refer to obviously as dual and that is the faster way to run then correct? that being at 128?

Thanks again for all your help too!

 

[ts3433]

What is your current board?

Dual channel is faster, but much of the time there's not a very significant difference (K8, which won't do 3 stick DC), and in some cases gains are pretty much just theoretical (K7; its FSB is only 64 bits wide anyway, so it can't utilize the extra bandwidth, but the NF2 IGP can by diverting it to its integrated graphics). On a P4, though, the difference is quite noticeable.

If you have a K7-based Athlon/Duron (virtually any Athlon except A64s and S754 Semprons are included here), don't worry about running dual channel vs. single channel with the same amount of RAM.

 

[redlinejaxfl]

cool.i just traded my p4 for an athlon 64 3200+ it's my first athlon, and i wanted to get one bc of all the good things a iheard about them.i was hoping this 3200+ would run better than my p4 2.4. other than those specs i dont know anything about socket numbering and all that stuff ive heard people talk about on here.like I said, still learning!thanks again for your help!