Memory...whats all this mumbo jumbo?

[SoopaStar]

Thinking about adding memory to my PIII800 box (only has 128mb). Looking at Crucial's page and I just usually go with whatever had the fastest NS and Cas 2. But ya know what? I never really caught on to what all that ment. Can someone define these for me and tell me what is the optimum? What is really needed?
Cas Latency
ECC
Unbuffered
registered vs. unregistered
some of the 256 meg chips are 32meg x 72 and others are 32meg x 64. Whats the difference?
Thanks.

Paul C

EDIT:
also, when I search for my specific motherboard (abit KA7-100) I get prices are are considerabley higher or different than if I just search for PC133 SDRAM. any reason for this? thx

[This message has been edited by SoopaStar (edited 02-20-2001).]

[Fingers]

Crucial has become my favorite "quotable" website. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

What is the performance difference between CL2 and CL3? (http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/solution?11=000724-0010&130=000964475444&14=&2715=&15=&2716=&57=faq&58=&2900=5NKzmxs198&25=-1)

What is the difference between ECC and non-parity memory? (http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/solution?11=000724-0004&130=000964451872&14=&2715=&15=&2716=&57=faq&58=&2900=5NKzmxs198&25=-1)

Can you mix and match parity and non-parity modules? (http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/solution?11=001128-0008&130=000975431301&14=&2715=&15=&2716=&57=faq&58=&2900=5NKzmxs198&25=-1)

Will buffered and unbuffered DIMMs fit into the same socket? (http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/solution?11=000802-0000&130=000965198709&14=&2715=&15=&2716=&57=faq&58=&2900=DDHVZ3fjjA&25=-1)

<A HREF="http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/solution?11=001115-0006&130=000974322108&14=&2715=&15=&2716=&57=faq&58=&2900=5NKzmxs198&25=-1" TARGET=_blank>What do 16x64, 16x72, etc. represent when describing memory?
</A>

<A HREF="http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/solution?11=001018-0003&130=000971881378&14=&2715=&15=&2716=&57=faq&58=&2900=5NKzmxs198&25=-1" TARGET=_blank>
What does "registered" SDRAM mean?</A>

Anything, and I mean anything else you want to know about computer memory can be found in the Crucial FAQ (http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/faq) or the Crucial Library (http://www.crucial.com/library/)


[This message has been edited by Fingers (edited 02-20-2001).]

[Axel]

First of all - tell us more about that motherboard - specifically which I/O chipset you are running - is it intel or VIA or what - and which chipset -

I prefer the intel 440BX chipset myself - extremely stable with SDRAM -

ECC - this has to do with error correcting and checking some like it - some say it takes away some speed. I'm of the opinion that fast junk or fast errors isn't speed - it's a mistake - just faster - so I buy ECC RAM when I do....

As far as prices go - NEC, Kingston, Micron, and a few others make really good RAM with a warranty - I have come to distrust IBM RAM, though some people swear by it.... - yeah - I swear too - .... hahaha

Some say buy the fastest cheapest you can get that the motherboard can handle and for the most part they will do okay through the life of that PC - typically it's so woefully out of date in 2 years and, unless its treated extremely poorly by the user or the environment ( heat & power surges ) the vast majority of RAM will make it just fine.

Most people looking to speed up their system benefit much more from the following -

keep a clean system with almost nothing loading up through startup or a registry key - Most speed peoblems are quickly identified when they pull up a task list that stretches down for two pages....

Next - most people benefit much more from buying a quality fast hard drive with a larger onboard cache thay they ever would from adding more RAM. Above 128MB in today's consumer market, the ram is really a waste unless you are running NT or possibly winME from the microsoft family - UNIX, AIX, and possibly Linux.

I prefer the Quantum family of hard drives currently - you can get a good Quantum 20GB 100ATA hard drive with a 2MB onboard cache for about $110 that will probably double the system's speed at it's weakest link - drive access speed - and give you a lot more than $110 or RAM would give you. That and keeping a clean system will be MUCH more satisfying than seeing a barely noticable 10 percent performance increase by adding $200 of RAM to a box that is already out of date....

chew on that a little......

it's also more work up front as you have to reload all your software &lt;&lt;&lt; but that helps you build a clean system as long as you stop and do a defrag after each load....

chew some more -

some are capable of adding RAM but wouldn't conside trying to install a new hard drive and reloading software -

your results will depend on how lazy or motivated you plan to be....

Now if you REALLY want to talk speed - then you want to come up with a solid state "hard" drive - also know as a RAM drive by some - a 3 GB drive costs about $16,000 but it has no moving parts and has burst network speeds that most LAN's can only dream of.... Imagine your computer booting up in 2 seconds instead of the 5 to 8 minutes it takes to load everything now..... Put these things into a super SCSI array for added disk space and then you're limited to about 7 drives - put this in a RAID5 array to again double your speed - only about 10 GB of space but you've exceeded the refresh rate on your monitor as well as the through-put speed on the PCI bus of 132 MB per second.....- they are currently overcoming this with something called Infiniband which might replace the PCI standard in a year....

At that point you'd have more computing power than the first two space shuttles and the first NASA control room combined - all on your desk - price tag - well, more than I make in 3 years - but the speed is available...

[capybara]

cas3- ram gives data to the bus in 3 clock
cycles. cas2 does so in 2 clock cycles.
32 meg deep x 8 bytes wide (64 bits)=256 MB
as compared to:
32 meg deep x 8 bytes wide, each byte
with a a 9th bit for parity which does
not count for memory size (72 bits)=256 MB
capybara =)
Axel give good advice about a fast hard drive
contributing more to speading up you comp
than any ^ in ram above 128 meg . also along
that same idea, scsi hard drives (UW160)
have 160 MB transfer rates, and 10,000 rpm, much faster than ide, but cost more than ide also.

[Sabbath]

http://www1.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=210

If I am not mistaken ECC is the same as registered which I believe is the same as buffered.

Double check this information with someone else on the site.