RAM help.

Achilles

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I am thinking about upgrading my PC:
cpu: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz Socket 478
RAM: 512
Mobo: MS-7012
HD:160GB
gfx: MEDION RADEON 9800XL 128mb

Firstly i wont pretend i know what im talking about with this. Basically im thinking of sticking some more RAM in. Im told that the motherboard is an msi motherboard (whatever that means;p). According to 3DMark 05 my current ram is SDRAM and the form factor is DIMM. What i want to know is what RAM my motherboard is compatible with; Should i remove the generic medion ram altogether and put in some new shiny stuff? If i do get some newshiny stuff, should i get 2x 512 or 1 stick of 1gig? or should i keep the generic medion stuff and buy another module of generic 512? Furthermore if i get more RAM, will i have to put extra case fans in?
Thanks for any responses.
 

Kaun_IA

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if u want only 1 gig... id say 2x512 is better that one 1gig stick
 

Tualatin

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You can easily buy another SDRAM strip.. as long as it fits in your motherboard..

Ram strip looks like this:
images
Find that one on your mobo, and see if it has any free slots next to it.

Memory doesn't take much power, so you should be fine running an extra 512MB.

There are different SDRAM strips.. some run @ 100mhz, some at 133 and i think 166mhz. It doesn't really matter which ones you buy, as they will adjust (only downwards) to your current one.

Don't bother getting all new RAM, as SDRAM is 'ancient' now. So since you already have 512MB.. just get another 512.. or a GB. With DDRRAM nowadays, it's fastest to use 2x512 instead of 1x1024.. but with SD it doesnt matter at all..

last, no need for extra fans.. just FYI: Real 'heat' makers are: Your CPU and videocard. Next to that comes ur HDDs, and maybe as last the memory sticks.


Short version: Buy 512MB SD-RAM, if you got the spare slot.
 

Konah

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if your sure of your mobo make and model goto http://www.crucial.com and use thier ram selector program, will tell you whats compatible. unfortunatly it wont tell if the new stick is compatible with the old one tho...

other alternative is take the 1 stick u got out, go to a pc shop and say "i want another one of these plzzzz"

1gb makes a huge difference to daoc so its definately worth doing.
 

Equador

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2 strips of 512 mb is faster than 1 strip of 1024 mb, but 1 strip of 512 mb and 1 strip of 1024 mb is faster since you'd have 1536...you get the point :p However, simply doubling your ram from 512 to 1024 will get you a significant performance-boost, no matter how you achieve it.
 

Achilles

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Thanks for all of your posts.. all really helpful info :). I am waiting for Medion customer support to email me back about getting the case off ;p, for the life of me i cant get the side panel off. So i cant actually have a poke yet, but Crucial says i have 2 available slots out of 4. Could someone explain though why it says in slot 1: 128 MB , Non-parity DDR PC3200
Slot 2: 4096 MB Non-parity DDR PC3200 ??
 

Jeriraa

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Admittedly I am not uptodate anymore on hardware development. Especially not RAM.

Can someone explain to me why exactly have 2 modules is supposed to be faster than haveing only 1 module?

Afaik it shouldn't matter how many modules you have installed since they are all adressed over the same bus.
 

Tualatin

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because accessing 2 strips is faster then only 1 to do all. Even so, with SDRAM it won't be noticable..

If you cannot open the case, dont bother buying extra RAM.. with those ALDI/LIDL pc's there's a space shortage already.. getting to the memory parts can be quite the b!tch :eek:
 

Jeriraa

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Tualatin said:
because accessing 2 strips is faster then only 1 to do all. Even so, with SDRAM it won't be noticable..
Not to nag or anything but... Why?

Since they sit on the same bus only one can be accessed at a time anyways. Its not like the CPU can access both at the same time.
 

Achilles

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Tualatin said:
because accessing 2 strips is faster then only 1 to do all. Even so, with SDRAM it won't be noticable..

If you cannot open the case, dont bother buying extra RAM.. with those ALDI/LIDL pc's there's a space shortage already.. getting to the memory parts can be quite the b!tch :eek:

Got it open.. just needed to be brave enough to use a bit of force ;p. Well i've already ordered 2x 1gb stick of PC3200 DDR400 ;p which crucial say are combatible with the motherboard and are the same spec as my current samsung RAM. Can always just take out the gfix card to craete space while working.
 

Thegreatest

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well, if you say that your current ram module is SDRAM, the ram you have ordered won't fit on your motherboard...

the only exception would be that you own a motherboard which has support for both sdram and ddram...in that case you can't get them both work together so you'll need to remove the old sdram and place the 2 new ordered ddram modules in the correct slots.
 

Ingafgrinn Macabre

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Thegreatest said:
well, if you say that your current ram module is SDRAM, the ram you have ordered won't fit on your motherboard...

the only exception would be that you own a motherboard which has support for both sdram and ddram...in that case you can't get them both work together so you'll need to remove the old sdram and place the 2 new ordered ddram modules in the correct slots.
md8080.jpg


afaics those are DDR slots, and also here they say it supports DDR... you might want to seek out the mobo he quoted first before scareing the bloke with ungrounded remarks. It's quite obvious he's no computer whizkid, mainly because he said so himself and DDR is also called Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory... DDR SDRAM so a mistake is easily made....

(I'm still baffled though why they called DDR2 that way, and not QDR from quadriple data rate... but that's just me...)
 

Thegreatest

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chill out dude, I'm not scaring anyone...do you think it's my intention to make him go "oh shit I've ordered the wrong one, what to do now?". He said a prog he used detected it as "SDRAM", yes a mistake is easily maken but I just said "in case of...". It appears to be not the case so he has nothing to worry about right? Better be safe than sorry.
 

Ballard

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Jeriraa said:
Not to nag or anything but... Why?

Since they sit on the same bus only one can be accessed at a time anyways. Its not like the CPU can access both at the same time.

The bus can actually handle data from two sticks simultaneously if the system is configured to use dual channel memory access.

However he isnt actually 100% right about the performance implications. One stick can perform just as fast especially on many AMD systems. The only time it will be significantly faster to have multiple sticks is on systems that need to utilise dual channel ram for it to be able to match or get close to the memory transfer rate of the CPU. For example the faster AMD's will run the front side bus at 200 MHz, allowing a maximum transfer rate of 3,200 MB/s. DDR400 also has a real clock speed of 200 Mhz which will also allow the ram to transfer 3,200 Mb/s without the need for dual channel mode. If you had older ram like DDR200 running at 100mhz, by using two sticks in dual channel you could achieve the same result i.e. 2 * 100 mhz = 200mhz.

In the case above however, with a pentium 4 3.0 ghz the original poster will almost certainly need dual channel ram to achieve optimum performance unless top quality DDR2 was used.
 

Ballard

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Tualatin said:
Don't bother getting all new RAM, as SDRAM is 'ancient' now.

You know all DDR is based on SDRAM technology? it will most likely be reported as PC66 - PC133 if it truly was what used to be called 'SDRAM'. Looking at his system specs there is no chance that it isnt using DDR memory already.
 

Jeriraa

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Ballard said:

Ok, I don't want to be a smartass here. Its just that I had a crashcourse in CPU design about 5 years back and the topic was very interesting to me. I still have my doubts that there is any difference between using 2 sticks or just 1.

As you already said DDR stands for double data rate. You also said DDR RAM's are SDRAM's, also called synchronous dynamic RAM's.

What I still don't understand is how the memory access bus is supposed to access 2 modules simultaneously. The 'synchronous' part in SDRAM stands for the ability to read and write data at the same time. So the bus has one channel for writing data and one for reading.
The DDR or 'double data rate' describes the ability of the RAM to recieve data not only with a rising clocksignal flank but also with a dropping one, theoretically doubling the bandwidth compared to RAM that can only recieve data at a rising clocksignal flank.

So if I am not totally stupid or missing out on something the only time the CPU could ever access 2 modules at the same time is in the case that it recieves data from one and sends data to another stick. However thats should be exactly the same as if it was recievind and sending data at the same time to/from only 1 stick shouldnt it?

Now it could be quite possible that the modern memory access busses have more than just one write/read channel but I highly doubt that. The reason is a problem called 'mutual exclusion'... you have to make sure that no single bit ever is written and read (or written and written for that matter) at the same time or you will have a hell of a mess in your memory. That problem is 'rather simple' to solve (well, its not really simple) when you only have one read and one write access but it turns really really complicated the more accesses you add.
 

Skg

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Jeriraa said:
Ok, I don't want to be a smartass here. Its just that I had a crashcourse in CPU design about 5 years back and the topic was very interesting to me. I still have my doubts that there is any difference between using 2 sticks or just 1.

As you already said DDR stands for double data rate. You also said DDR RAM's are SDRAM's, also called synchronous dynamic RAM's.

What I still don't understand is how the memory access bus is supposed to access 2 modules simultaneously. The 'synchronous' part in SDRAM stands for the ability to read and write data at the same time. So the bus has one channel for writing data and one for reading.
The DDR or 'double data rate' describes the ability of the RAM to recieve data not only with a rising clocksignal flank but also with a dropping one, theoretically doubling the bandwidth compared to RAM that can only recieve data at a rising clocksignal flank.

So if I am not totally stupid or missing out on something the only time the CPU could ever access 2 modules at the same time is in the case that it recieves data from one and sends data to another stick. However thats should be exactly the same as if it was recievind and sending data at the same time to/from only 1 stick shouldnt it?

Now it could be quite possible that the modern memory access busses have more than just one write/read channel but I highly doubt that. The reason is a problem called 'mutual exclusion'... you have to make sure that no single bit ever is written and read (or written and written for that matter) at the same time or you will have a hell of a mess in your memory. That problem is 'rather simple' to solve (well, its not really simple) when you only have one read and one write access but it turns really really complicated the more accesses you add.

I think this is the answer you are looking for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_Channel

Edit:
Also check http://www.kingston.com/newtech/MKF_520DDRwhitepaper.pdf
 

Ballard

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Its really just the introduction of a new type of memory controller. DDR normally has a 64 bit data path throught the motherboard. A motherboard that uses 'dual channel' architecture will effectively combine the 2 indentically speced dimms (Same size and same speed) and pass data through a 128 bit pipe. Naturally the memory addresses across both dimms are exclusive nullifying any chance of the point you make actually happening.

EDIT: or see above :p
 

Jeriraa

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Ballard said:
Its really just the introduction of a new type of memory controller. DDR normally has a 64 bit data path throught the motherboard. A motherboard that uses 'dual channel' architecture will effectively combine the 2 indentically speced dimms (Same size and same speed) and pass data through a 128 bit pipe. Naturally the memory addresses across both dimms are exclusive nullifying any chance of the point you make actually happening.

EDIT: or see above :p

Ooooooh Kay... and that 3 years old already! Damn, told you I wasn't up todate anymore. Hah, using 2 channels in interlaced mode... could have been my idea! ;) Basicly thats a Raid 0 for memory isnt it?
 

Bonelamencer

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Ballard said:
If you had older ram like DDR200 running at 100mhz, by using two sticks in dual channel you could achieve the same result i.e. 2 * 100 mhz = 200mhz.
dual channel doesn't double frequency but you get 128(64x2) bit data bus.
if FSB is 200Mhz it doesn't mean it has 3200mb/sec data transfer rate,depends on the architecture of the CPU ;)
200mhz*64bit/8(4byte)*2(double pumped) = 3200mb/sec for DDR400 SDRAM.
 

Bonelamencer

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Ingafgrinn Macabre said:
(I'm still baffled though why they called DDR2 that way, and not QDR from quadriple data rate... but that's just me...)
DDR is QDR too tho.The difference between DDR and DDR2 is in the quantity of pins and usage of power afaik,e.g. DDR2 has more pins and consumes less power.
 

Achilles

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Tesla Monkor said:
Download and install CPU-Z and it'll tell you exactly what kind of memory you have installed, including timing, serial numbers, etc.

http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-132.zip

That should help you a bit.
Thanks. Trouble is 3D mark, crucial and cupid are all telling me different things or all giving me different parts of the picture. The new stuff should be coming tommorrow or by the latest wed, hoping it will work xD.
 

Achilles

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RAM came today.. unpacked plugged, system info now says i have 2.50G of RAM xD. Thanks for all the help guys :).
 

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