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| Thread ID: 30502 | 2003-02-21 06:53:00 | Memory upgrade question ... when is 256Mb only 128Mb?? | Rod J (451) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 122921 | 2003-02-21 10:25:00 | I thought it was a load of rubbish too. Mum's PC has WinME on it. I did have 320mb of Ram in there. I took the 64 chip out (there's 2 x 128 chips in there as well). From doing quite a bit of photo editing, I noticed the difference in speed. Yes, all ram chips are 133mhz. Unless it has something to do with the motherboard handling ram.. |
joefish (3209) | ||
| 122922 | 2003-02-21 10:41:00 | >Question is,is there a noticeable difference between the two ramages? depends on what you use it for. for small basic tasks 128 is ok. i find that 196 is quite good. 256 is sweet. i find it tends to make the pc more stable, proberly due to less swapping out to the hadrdrive (swapfile). |
tweak'e (174) | ||
| 122923 | 2003-02-21 20:23:00 | Ram is organsied in 'Banks'. Some of the older mainboard chipsets have a bank size limitation that is smaller than the size of available Ram modules. Ram modules MAY have their total memory divided into banks. e.g. a 256MB module could be organised as 2 x 128MB banks. So you need to acertain the maximum bank size, your mainboard supports, then establish that the DIMM meets that criteria. How the memory is organised on a DIMM depends on the chips used: If, for example a module uses 16 chips (8 per side), and the chips are organised as 32Mb x 4 bits, all 16 chips are required to be used in 1 bank, as a memory bank has 64 bits of data width (16 chips x 4 bits/chip). So you have 1 bank of 256MB. If the 16 chips used are organised as 16Mb x 8 bits, you will have 2 banks of 8 chips( 8 chips x 8 bits = 64bit wide memory); that is 2 banks of 128MB. So having a 'double sided' memory module does NOT necessarily imply 'double banks'. Most all DIMMs have the SPD (serial presence detect) eprom on them (even the cheapies). This contains, among a lot of other things, the number of banks that the DIMM is organised into. You can view the contents of the SPD chip with CTSPD (www.heise.de) (under "extended display" look for 'number of banks' and 'module bank density') :| |
wuppo (41) | ||
| 122924 | 2003-02-21 20:52:00 | Thomas I think you need to read the bottom of my RAM clutter FAQ. it explains how much ram is good for the different OS's around | roofus (483) | ||
| 122925 | 2003-02-21 21:24:00 | Thanks for that Roofus,I will only get all this stuff through osmosis. Mind you I bet I make a better cabinet than you;):D |
Thomas (1820) | ||
| 122926 | 2003-02-22 03:36:00 | osmosis hmmm off the top of my head isn't that to do with body cells extracting water away from another part, or something along those lines, not bad for a cabinet maker :-) and a good analogy for gaining knowledge Mind you i could probably balance the books better than you ;-) :-) |
roofus (483) | ||
| 122927 | 2003-02-22 04:49:00 | Forget the probably,I will guarantee you can.:) | Thomas (1820) | ||
| 122928 | 2003-02-22 04:51:00 | Thanks all for your input ... tweake and wuppo seem to be elaborating on what the shop person told me, so it sounds like that might be the reason. My friend might want to get the other ram module (256Mb older ram) but she seemed pretty happy with the 128Mb yesterday. Thanks wuppo for that link, I'll check out that CTSPD utility. | Rod J (451) | ||
| 122929 | 2003-02-22 04:52:00 | Diffusion of molecules through a semipermeable membrane from a place of higher concentration to a place of lower concentration until the concentration on both sides is equal | Thomas (1820) | ||
| 122930 | 2003-02-25 10:10:00 | Well 1st of all there's nothing wrong with the RAM you're using nor are you been taken for a ride. The issue is with your motherboard's RAM slots. On older boards the slots mostly could only handle 64MB max that is a total of 64MB per bank. For this reason the board will only pick-up the maximum amount of RAM it can handle off the chip in Bank 0. I"m sure if you look at the manual for the motherboard it will tell you what the maximum RAM is it can take and also the maximum RAM per bank. Once you find that out you may have to go back to the store and get smaller sized RAM chips to fit the boards memory SPECS Hope that helps |
chiefnz (545) | ||
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