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Which RAM to get? Need some smart people's opinions.

Q

qacwac

Senior member
Here is what I have.

Athlon 700 on a FIC SD-11 mobo, 128 MB pc100 SDRAM, 27 gig HD, ati rage fury pro, slow cd-rw, soem cheap sound card, blah blah.

My memory reads:
Japan FD49
9934 6NN The "6" might have been a "G"
5264805FTTA60 Again "6" might be a "G"
PC100-222-60 Pretty sure that ones a "6"
(I didn't want to take the stick out because I didn't know if it would dork anything up so I had to tilt my computer, that's why I'm not sure if it's a 6 or G)

Anyway my question now is should I get

APACER 128MB SDRAM PC133 Unbuffered, 16x64,3.3v with a life time warranty for $66 here

or

APACER 128MB SDRAM PC100 Unbuffered, 16x64,3.3v (doesn't say it has a life time warranty) for $65 here

or


256MB PC-133 (32x64) SyncMax for $96.99 here

or

Generic 128MB PC-133 SDRAM 7ns Backward Compatable for $46 here

That is my dilemna. I know not what to do. Are there any comptibility issues I need to know about? Is the APACER really that much better to get 128MB less? I'm not in desperate need of RAM right now so should I wait and let it keep dropping? Are there some deals that I'm missing? Please give me your opinions and the reason why as I'm trying to learn a little something.

Misc. things. What does all that stuff on my existing RAM mean? If I were to take it out would I in general be able to put it into a celeron 533?

Thanks to everybody who replies. I really appreciate it.
 
What's the symbol on the memory? There should be a little manufacturer's logo on the memory. That makes it a lot less hit and miss to identify. The "9934" is "manufactured in work-week 34 of 1999". For the rest, I'd need to consult the datasheet by the manufacturer.

I don't know much about Athlons, but the impression that I've gotten is that you don't want to buy budget SDRAM for them. I'm not sure if that's only PC133 SDRAM, or if it also applies to PC100 SDRAM.

The memory that you currently have should work fine with a Celeron 533. Pretty much all of the PC100 SDRAM DIMMS are backwards compatible with 66MHz SDRAM - although I have heard of rare cases where this isn't true.
 
the ram you have is hitachi 10ns PC100

I am not sure if it has any compatibility issue with the ram you are looking for, but I would suggest you to get quality ram as athlon is very picky about memory
 
Got it. Right next to Japan it has a kind of circle with a square in it (I forget the geometric term meaning the points of the square lie on the circle) and a dot inside the square. Hope that helps.
 
This weeks Weekly Memory Prices article at Sharky extreme in the high end gaming system memory recommendation has some advise on memory and there is a recent Anandtech review of memory too. Anandtech also has low and high end machine recommendations encluding memory advise. The prices are wrong though, much higher than current actuality. I'm pretty sure the $145 memory Sharky recommends is $91.
 
Moonbeam: I found the Sharky review but can you give a link to the Anandtech one.

What are some high quality RAM brands. From a site I got Toshiba, Samsung, Micron, Siemens. Is that accurate? What about the below mentioned APACER?

The other thing. Is there any reason to get pc100 over pc133 or vice versa? Especially if they're the same price.

Thanks again.
 
For quality it is arguable but amongst the best are mosel vitelic and crucial (a marketing arm of micron). Corsair uses micron chips and is damm good as well.

As for speed i would always get pc133 because even though the current athlons only use 100 mhz fsb (actually 200 b/c of ddr) you can run teh memory asynchronously on the kx and kt chipsets and therefore take advanteage of the added pc133 bandwith. Whenever possible it is advaisable to get pc133 ram that is rated at cas 2 that is is has a cas latency of 2 rather than the standard 3 which gives an improve ment in performance. The best ram has 7 ns chips and is rated at cas 2. Crucial and mushkin sell such modules but you will find them in the $110-150 dollar range for 128 megs. It is more expensive butmany people swear but the stuff. I personally recomend infineon as a lower cost alternative because even though it's 7.5 ns and rated at cas 3 every stick i have seen will do cas2. It can also be had for about $80 us. Finally you should know apacer uses chips from one of the memory manufacturers it doesn't make it's own. THat's why you will find apacer with micron or infineon chips for example.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

🙂
 
Thanks hanpan.

New questions: What is ECC? Do I get those with it or without.

Also pertaining to latency. How do you get a cas3 to "do" cas2?

Does the 222-60 have something to do with latency. That's what my RAM reads. Or is that nothing?

 
ECC stands for error correction code and I've heard most althon mobos have problems running ECC ram.
Your ram is rated at PC100 CAS2 according to the sticker and that's really rare for a stick of 10ns PC100 ram
 
Ah, it's beginning to come together. Still don't know what I'll buy though. But I know something now.
 
Have you checked the hotdeal forum? You can get a stick of 128mb Kingston PC133 for ~70 at outpost.com shipped overnight. The price is after rebate tho. Anyway, I think this is a much better deal than the one you listed
 
Check the hot deals forum. Go for with what everyone else goes than you know it's a good deal. I myself have use Crucial RAM that'll overclock to 150MHZ FSB CAS2. But I just got 2 128 meg sticks which has Infineon Chips and it does 133MHz CAS2 no problem.
 
This is Anand's in depth explanation of memory and some good choices here

You set the CAS latency in the BIOS. Learn about that at Adrian's Rojak Pot here

Check out the memory advertisers on Anand's home page.


Sorry for posting, I just noticed you DID say smart people. 😀
 
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