What's the difference???

[firebirdude]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820148022

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231119

Seems that the "faster" one is half the price? Or am I just stupid? (Prolly stupid lol)

 

[JustaGeek]

Older/slower types of memory are more expensive due to lower market demand.

And not all older computers accept faster memory, so the owners of some ex. Dell or HP machines are forced to use slower DDR2.

You will see the same "abnormality" with the DDR memory.

 

[firebirdude]

But that's just "rated stable speed" we are talking about, correct? Any mobo will clock those at the same speed until the user bumps it up, correct? So that aside..... they're still both standard 2G DDR2 sticks...??? I don't see why any "newer" mobo would be forced to use the stick that is rated higher....

Thanks for your reply

 

[JustaGeek]

Not necessarily.

533MHz or 800MHz is the highest speed that the RAM was tested at, and it is guaranteed to accomplish that speed. A motherboard will most likely recognize both of these memory types as 533 or 800, based on the SPD readings.

And no one is "forced" to use the higher speed memory - if someone is happy with 2.4GHz Pentium 4 and 333MHz DDR, they are not "forced" to upgrade to C2D and DDR2.

But if you want the high performance modern computer, you get the Quad and fastest DDR2 you can afford.

800MHz RAM will probably run fine at lower 533MHz, but there is no guarantee that the 533MHz RAM will take any kind of higher frequency - you can't just "bump it up".

BTW, higher frequency means higher bandwidth, greater throughput, and ability to run faster clocked processors.