which ram is better?

[cluelessnewbie]

I heard of MANY kinds of ram, Sdram and DDR and then within those i heard stuff like pc133, pc2100 and etc. But on an athlon t-bird system which would be the best performing?? (specifics would really help , thx a lot)

[ragtop]

Check this out for a description & pictures of each type (except I think they're missing Rambus (RDRAM), which is mostly used in Pentium 4's. http://www.crucial.com/library/memorymodid.asp

As far as performance with T-Birds, DDR is the fastest, but the early motherboards and chipsets suporting DDR seemed to have a significant number of bugs in them. The new AMD chipset promises to be better, but any time you go for the cutting edge technology, you have to live with the potential for bugs.

If you want to stay with something tried & true, (if not the fastest thing on the block), then stick with good old name brand PC133.

[spidey_joe80@hotmail.com]

there are basically 3 types of ram you need to worry aobut and thats sdram, ddr ram (which is just sdram doubled), and rambus or RDRAM.
DDR is the best performing . You need to have a drr compatible motherboard to use it though. Although ddr is the best performing its not by much ddr ram has a real world gain of an averagew of about 10%. New benchmarks are showing a greater gain though up to about 40%. sdram is the cheapest and you will find it in most computers is comes on four versions (so far)
pc66: 66mhx
pc100: 100mhz
pc133: 133mhz
pc150: 150mhz
the pc2100 ram you see is ddr:double data rate ram. it comes in 3 versions (so far)

pc1600: its pc100 ram doubles 200mhz
pc2100: pc133 doubled 266mhz
pc2400: pc150 doubled 300mhz

Dont let the bid numbers fool you pc2400 is not 2.4ghz ram. to get pc2400 you start with pc150 150mhz x 8 bit pathway= 1200x 2clocks per cycle or 2 cycles per clock anyway you come out with pc2400 150x8x2.
Rambus sucks and you dont have to worry about cuz u got a t-bird, its expensive, only got a 2 bit pathway and can only be used in p4 systems and p3(with i820 mobo) its also got a longer acces time than ddr.
For your tbird if you got the cash get a ddr mobo and live long and prosper. if you dont wanna spend that much just stick with normal(sdram) its cheap and ddr isn't that much faster, yet. You can also get like a gig of it sdram is so cheap.

[Goldwingnut]

For an intro to RAM, see Karbosguide:
http://www.karbosguide.com/module2e1.htm

The best RAM is the RAM designed for your motherboard. The final determination is derived from a combination of how fast your FSB is, what chipset you have, etc. All of this is Motherboard specific. So the real question is, what's best for your MB? The answer is hopefully in the manual, which is usually available on the net, usually in PDF format.

[cluelessnewbie]

thx for all the help, I guess ill go with ddr ram, but I have one more question.

Which ram will be better in the near - mid future. I want to get a motherboard which supports a ram that will get better so i can upgrdae it later. basically, even if sdram or whatever is bad now, if it'll get better in the future ill try to get a motherboard which supports sdram so i can upgrdae.

[spidey_joe80@hotmail.com]

DDR will get better by far ya see it only gets real world gains of about 10% but thats because the Current athlon isn't optimized for it. When the athlon 4 comes out, it will hopefully, if all goes well (i have no doubts) get much better performance gain from ddr. And if the Athlon4 is socket A based which I have been told is the case, you can buy a good motherboard now and just replace your Current Athlon with the new one when it comes out and get better gains from ddr. Fanastic! and you wont have to replace the motherboard.

most ddr motherboards are also compatible with sdram also.
Good Luck http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by spidey_joe80@hotmail.com (edited 06-09-2001).]

[cluelessnewbie]

thx a lot spidey... I think im going to build my own computer, I've been getting a lot of advice and suggestions and building my own will save me nearly 500-1000 than buying.

[Hellmund]

Great info Spidey_joe, i've been pondering why they call it PC2100 and PC1600, but one question, doesn't PC133 have an 8-bit pathway as well so it should be PC1050.

[Imperion1]

ASUS (for now) makes the only motherboard that will use either DDR or Sdram memory.
DDR rams have one alignment key in them.
Sdram rams have two alignment keys.

DDR mobos cost between $30 to $50 more than your Sdram mobos, depending on manufacturer.

I've also noticed that 384mb Sdram will come close to equal that of 256mb DDR.

Only difference I've really noticed between my two Sdram and DDR systems is that my bootup time for Sdram is 1min 14sec. Bootup time for my DDR is 36sec.

Not too much noticeable difference between DDR and Sdram though.

I'd go for whichever way you can afford.

[cluelessnewbie]

ok i've decided between pc2100 and pc2400 but could someone explain to me if there is a real difference between the two??

the price ranges seem to be somewhat similar so I just wanted to get whatever performs better with an amd t bird system... thx

[spidey_joe80@hotmail.com]

someone told me that nothing oficially supports pc2400 so u would need to everclock it to take advantage.

[spidey_joe80@hotmail.com]

hellmund i think sdram also has a 8 bit pathway. pc2100 ram should just be called pc266 they use the big numbers for marketing to make it look alot faster than pc133.