diff types of ram

Hecate

this is confusing.

Want to stick an extra 64megs in the old workhorse but i notice there's different types of ram on the market..SDRAM etc..

how do i know which type is in my machine at the moment?...can i buy any type of ram and stick it in or will my motherboard reject it?

gandalf

Depends what the processor is, bios etc. Is it 72 Pin (Simm), 168pin (Dimm), 66Mhz or 100Mhz. Parity, non-Parity blah blah blah.

One proggie that I have found is fairly cool is Sandra. Go to www.zdnet.co.uk , goto the downloads area and do a search under Sandra or benchmarks. This proggie give you details of alot of your systems bit n pieces. You'll find the memory info under Mainboard information.

Gandalf.

Helv

Keeps crashing. Why?

gandalf

Had that problem with me work PC, turned out to be the version of winsock on it. Twas Novell and the proggy didn't like it at all.

Gandalf.

Hobbes

Sweeeeet. Love it, already sped up my machine more!! Think I'll get the full version.

Someone tell me, is ECC hardware or software setting on a chip?

Hecate

great stuff..ta

Helv

I know abou not mixing ram, but can you but in 66mhz with 100mhz. Probably not but im just wondering

WhiteWashMan

hehe, i know about this sort of stuff coz i actually used to make simms and dimms

you can put 66mhz and 100 mhz ram into your machine.

it will work...BUT....
if your bus runs at 66mhz, thats fine, coz it means your 100mhz ram will only run that fast anyway. will make no difference

however if you put 66mhz ram into a machine with a bus speed of 100mhz (most new machines) then it will only slow down your machine coz the ram will take longer to do whatever ram does.
so if you have 128mg of 100mhz ram, and want to add 32 mg of 66mhz ram, you may as well leave it at 128mg.

afaik ecc is hardware. just makes if faster and a lot more stable. like connecting a modem and isdn at 44000kbs. the isdn will be smother connection. get the idea?

and fo rthaose that really have no clue, simms must be inserted in pairs and max at 32 mg and have 72 pins
dims can be inserted seperately and come in 128mg chunks and have erm.. forgoten! anout 164 pins or something!

and to end, if anyone want s o buy any 16 mg 66mhz sdram, i have about 5 for sale. going VERY cheap. oh, and i built them myself, but dont worry, they work perfectly coz i had them in both my last pc and my mothers present pc.

have a nice day, and if im wrong about any of this crap, feel free to berate me

WhiteWashMan

noooooo, its only simms (72 pin) that come in 32mg MAX.
dimms (186 pins) can come any size from 8 upwards. ive never seen one less than 8 mg, but mim sure they ca be got. although why youd buy one i dont know.

ram is not pc specific. afaik ram will run in both apple and pcs. it doesnt matter if its a p11 or p111 or imac

sdram is ALWAYS dimms. but not all dimms are sdram. could just be dram (dynamic random access memory)

im not sure how you could figure out what speed your ram is. i dont even know what diagnoostic tools will tell you what speed it is. must look that up.


the example i gave of adding the 32 mg to the 128 mg was putting 32mg of 66mhz ram with 128 mg of 100mhz ram. it will slow down the speed of your overall ram. mind you, 34 nano seconds wont make much of a difference if you are using word! its more for playing quake at 2 million fps that you might notice the difference

the ram runs at whatever speed the ram is set at. but if you have 100mhz ram in a 66mhz bus speed, then it really wont make much difference, and vica versa you are wasting 34 mhz of bus speed coz the ram can only supply at 66 mhz.

hmm, this message is all jumpy!
hope you get the idea.
im no expert, but i think all this right

Helv

is there anyway of knowing by just looking at the ram and not running a diagnostic if it is a dimm/simm 72/168 100mhz/66mhz.
Another question, do all pII ram run at 100mhz?

Helv

btw wwman are you sure you cant get dimms at 32megs? And is all sdram always dimm?

[This message has been edited by Helv (edited 05-08-99).]