On Friday 15 December 2000 05:16 pm, Adrian Smith wrote:
> hey Rog, glad to point you in the right direction. i wouldn't pay
> $173 for 128M either. that's why i have waited so long to upgrade.
> and i don't normally recomend companies or products or venders, but
> crucial did me right, so i'll give 'em a plug now and then. prices
> are dropping like flies on hardware (except monitors -- oh how i
> drool over a 21 inch screen). i can't believe CD burners are going
> for $200 these days - and probably even cheaper now & then on sale.
Guess I'll put my 2 pesos in (again ;>. Ram is what'll do. PC66, PC
100, PC133, PC<whatever>, are just labels. Good ram, is judged best by
its' rating in ns (eg, 8) and it's CL (cas latency rating). Even these
specs are no better than the reputation of the manufacturer and/or
vendor. AND even then, it's still no better than how it actually
performs in the real world. Ask any overclocker.
I've had ancient sticks of SDram (made before the PC66 label was
even invented) that ran flawlessly at 133mhz with -0- errors. I've got
a stick of Micron/Crucial 7ns that'll run at 155mhz, flawlessly ... but
I've also got an old stick of Mosel Vitelic 8ns that was in there right
a long with it at 155mhz during the same test. The Crucial is labeled
as 'PC133 Cas2', the Mosel as 'PC100'. Labels, including 'for Dell' or
'for Compaq' mean very little. Ram is what'll do with -0- errors.
BUT.... even more important is the stability and quality of the
motherboard the ram (or anything else for that matter) is run on.
Excellent quality boards like Asus, Abit, MSI, and Soyo provide extra
IO support to the ram. A large part of that is by boosting the IO to
3.5 <> 3.7 volts rather than the normal 3.3, trace design, and extra
capacitance. That's why ready mades (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, ...) need
good ram. The motherboards they use suck.
Bottom line is ram might run great on one board, and suck on another,
but.... even sucky ram is better than swap ;>
--
Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Galveston Bay
