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Thread: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

  1. #17
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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    I didn't realise that DDR1 was so expensive now. I have some 1Gig cas3 Nanya sticks

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    They've got these fancy price history graphs at Alternate.nl.

    http://www.alternate.nl/html/product...DR&l3=DDR+2+GB

    Here's one for a 2 GB kit. Click the 'Prijsverloop' button to see it. All of them go like this: they start very low, get doubled in the first half of February and then slowly drop to go slightly up again in the end of March.



    About these 'Timings' CPU-Z shows on the Memory tab and on the SPD tab, do I have to match those or will they change if I replace my RAM? In other words: are these numbers specified by the RAM stick you click into your computer, or is the new RAM stick required to use those listed there?

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jerrythafast View Post
    About these 'Timings' CPU-Z shows on the Memory tab and on the SPD tab, do I have to match those or will they change if I replace my RAM? In other words: are these numbers specified by the RAM stick you click into your computer, or is the new RAM stick required to use those listed there?
    The Timings you see in CPU-Z are the Timings of the memory you have installed in the machine. If you put something in that has different timings, all memory will run at the lower speeds.

    Note the lower the numbers the faster the RAM i.e. 2-2-2-8 is faster than 5-5-5-18.

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jerrythafast View Post
    About these 'Timings' CPU-Z shows on the Memory tab and on the SPD tab, do I have to match those or will they change if I replace my RAM? In other words: are these numbers specified by the RAM stick you click into your computer, or is the new RAM stick required to use those listed there?
    Timings are a performance thing, in the simplest terms, the tighter (lower) they are, the faster the ram will work. They're part of the dimm, but can be adjusted manually in most BIOS' (should say, probably not yours as we've established its likely to be Acer customised) and nope, you don't have to match the timings of your current ram, but as Sputnik said while I was writing my reply (grrr ) you'll only run at the speed of your slowest stick.

    Its very much an enthusiast thing and for those looking to sqeeuze every last drop of performance out of their system. Unless thats you, its not something worth paying a premium for and tbh any half decent stuff will have reasonable timings. That's not to say it isnt worth shopping around as it does vary widely and different bits of the X*X*X*XX business relate to different aspects of performance. Saying all that, the real world performance gain going from 512MB to 1GB or 2GB I'm guessing will amaze you enough that you probably won't care that much about it at the end of the day.

    Clicky for more info... http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/26

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    Quote Originally Posted by mehmeh View Post
    They're part of the dimm
    That's all I needed Though I'm learning quite a lot here.

    Also, my BIOS doesn't allow me to change them. In the main menu, it tells you what kind of options you can change in the selected submenu. There's one menu item with 'RAM timings' in this description thingy, but it's nowhere to be found in there.


    Anyway, this is going more advanced than necessary... as said, I only wanted to know if those are requirements to install the RAM, which they are not.


    Two last more questions and then I think I know pretty much everything interesting about RAM:
    -I assume Voltage is DIMM-specific too? I've got 2.5V now, but I see a nice 2.6V @ Alternate.
    -And this low density/high density... as it's mentioned before I think I'd rather have a look at that too. I see two almost identical products @ Alternate, the only difference: one is 32Mx8 and the other, which costs €2 more, is 64Mx8. Is this 32Mx8 a high density one? If it's of any importance I can just avoid those, just to be on the safe side. €2, really ;p


    Jerry

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    The RAM you are using now is rated for 2.6v IIRC. Your existing stick is 64MX8 also.

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    The only thing that keeps me from buying it now is doubt: will the price go down anytime soon, or is it more likely to rise again? It's clearly been way cheaper than this, but according to the graphs at Alternate.nl the prices have been MUCH higher about a month and a half ago.

    Stupid supply-and-demand-based-economy

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    are you in Holland then? What amount of memory was you looking to upgrade to?

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    I think I'll buy a 2 GB kit (2x 1GB).

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    Hehe awesome. The prices have gone up slightly after a long period without change. As I don't immediately need extra memory I'll just have to keep an eye on the prices and be patient.

    But impatient as I am, I just tried something else: we've got this old, dusty computer we haven't used for a year or so and it had a perfectly fine 256 MB ram stick in it. You guess, I just pushed it into the second slot of my computer. Runs without a problem for about an hour now.

    Some small changes to the timing, though.


    As you can see here the size went up to 768 MBytes. Frequency went down from 201 to 167.5 MHz (so that's a downside AFAICT). Some other timings (measured in clocks) went down because of this. So that's compensating a bit.

    As I haven't changed since last time I posted here, I have a question connected to all this: can 256 MB of extra RAM make up for the lower frequency?

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    I know it seems like a big hassle but if it was me instead of investing £50ish (which is indeed insane on DDR1 ram!) I would invest between £50-£100 on a new cheap motherboard that would allow u to swap over all ur existing components but also support better ones, including better ram! Going forward everything you are wanting to do will probably be limited by the board

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    Re: Upgrading/adding RAM: what should I look for?

    Hehe lol you think buying a new mobo + 2 GB DDR2 ram costs about the same as 2 GB of DDR1 memory? XD

    Now THAT's one big flaw in this economic system!



    Oh, and by the way... yesterday I played some Need for Speed: Most Wanted and I did a long run around the map... it ran nearly (as good as) flawless. It used to lag pretty badly when entering certain areas for the first time (as the game paused whenever the HD LED flashed up, I'm pretty sure this were Windows swapping memory). I knew I could expect a pretty good performance gain, but this really amazed me. Adding 256 MB of old, slower RAM... wow. Let's hope the DDR1 prices don't stay as high for much longer

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