RAMBUS - Info required

SickBoy · 09-11-2000 09:34PM #1

Are RAMBUS RIMMS capable of running at the same FSB as the CPU or is there a different way that they are rated speed wise? I see some of them rated as PC-800 and others rated as 300MHz. Is 300MHz the speed the RAM runs at in a system containing an 800MHz CPU or whats the deal? Someone please explain this to me.

Stephen · 09-11-2000 11:01PM

As far as I know...
this 866mhz machine has PC600 rambus memory.

SickBoy · 09-11-2000 11:15PM

The plot thickens....

_CreeD_ · 10-11-2000 06:56AM

I'm no expert on Rambus, but from what I (Think) know it runs on a 16bit as opposed to a 64 bit (SDRAM) bus. This means it only transmits 2Kb/s per clock cycle. So PC-800 means an 800Mhz FSB (For the memory only), giving you 1.6Gb/s bandwidth.
AFAIK the standard FSB on a Rambus system is not directly related to the Ram as the RamBus controller does the work, at least not in the same way we'd relate the FSB to buses and Memory in an SDRAM system.

As for 300Mhz, I'm not really sure. That'd be very low, 600Mb/s, unless it transmits on rising and falling clock cycle edges (Like DDR Sdram) then it'd be 1.2 Gb/s.

Gerry · 10-11-2000 10:07AM

rambus is crap in a single channel solution (i820 chipset) as it is slower than sdram. Dual channel rambus is quite good though it is considerably faster than sdram, but this is only available on the i840 server chipset.

Sonic · 10-11-2000 04:41PM

creed was right on the rambus below
as far as i know you are putting together a system on an 840 board

and

www.tomshardware.com

www.hardocp.com

[This message has been edited by Sonic (edited 10-11-2000).]

RAMBUS - Info required

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