A "Crucial" question: which SDRAM do I get?

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Robotech_Master

My computer is made up of the following:

13-150-045 MB SHUTTLE|AN35N

14-260-034 VGA PALIT GF FX5600 128MB 8X TV-RL

19-103-418 CPU AMD|2600/333 ATHLON XP BARTON R

It has three memory slots, two of which are filled by

20-146-535 DDRAM 256MB|32X72 PC3200 C3 CRUCL

My parents have pledged to get me more memory for Christmas, and I
have my eye on a 512-meg SDRAM from Crucial at NewEgg.com.

The thing is...there are about five different chips that come up when
I search on it, and I'm not sure which one I want, and which (if any)
will work best with my computer. Due to budgetary concerns, the
choice is probably going to come down to the first two on the list, so
I need to know what the difference is between them and which one I
should choose. Will one of them work with the two I have already and
the other not? Or what?

http://tinyurl.com/598du
 
Robotech_Master said:
My computer is made up of the following:

13-150-045 MB SHUTTLE|AN35N

14-260-034 VGA PALIT GF FX5600 128MB 8X TV-RL

19-103-418 CPU AMD|2600/333 ATHLON XP BARTON R

It has three memory slots, two of which are filled by

20-146-535 DDRAM 256MB|32X72 PC3200 C3 CRUCL

My parents have pledged to get me more memory for Christmas, and I
have my eye on a 512-meg SDRAM from Crucial at NewEgg.com.

The thing is...there are about five different chips that come up when
I search on it, and I'm not sure which one I want, and which (if any)
will work best with my computer. Due to budgetary concerns, the
choice is probably going to come down to the first two on the list, so
I need to know what the difference is between them and which one I
should choose. Will one of them work with the two I have already and
the other not? Or what?

http://tinyurl.com/598du
Click to expand...

That Tinyurl points to a Newegg listing. I don't think it's specific to
your motherboard because it lists the last two parts as DDR2, which
definitely are not compatible with your motherboard. Your motherboard
can only take DDR RAM not DDR2 RAM. So your only choices are really the
first three.

You should have also gone directly to the Crucial website itself and
looked up your motherboard on their online web lookup. Even if you don't
buy directly from Crucial itself, the information they give is useful
for reference:

Memory upgrades, graphics cards, flash media, and storage at Crucial.com
http://www.crucial.com/index.asp

Or go directly to it here:

AN35N motherboard upgrades from Crucial.com
http://www.crucial.com/store/listpa...boards&mfr=Shuttle&cat=&model=AN35N&submit=Go

http://tinyurl.com/3wejt

And here's something else that you have to consider before upgrading:
why do you want to upgrade? I haven't found a single good reason to go
from 512M upto 1G of RAM in a home computer. That's from personal
experience, there was hardly any noticeable difference from 512M to 1G.
And in fact, in your case, you have an Nforce2 motherboard, you have to
think long and hard about adding another stick of memory into it because
what you have right now with two sticks of RAM *is* the highest
performance connection scheme. Adding a third stick will disable the
Nforce's dual-channel feature and put it back into single-channel mode.
If you *really* need the additional RAM capacity, then by all means go
for it. Sometimes just having the extra RAM capacity is more important
than a few percentage points of additional RAM performance.

If you want to maintain the existing performance scheme, while at the
same time increasing your RAM capacity, then you'll have to remove the
existing RAM completely and replace them both with equal sized, bigger
RAM modules. That is kind of expensive as you can gather, but you might
be able to make some of the money back by selling off your old RAM to
somebody.

Now, I personally don't have any experience with Nforce boards, I only
know what I've read about them. Somebody who actually uses them might be
more qualified to tell you if the dual-channel feature is worthwhile
maintaining or not.

Yousuf Khan
 
Bitstring <fs%[email protected]>, from the
wonderful person Yousuf Khan said:
And here's something else that you have to consider before upgrading:
why do you want to upgrade? I haven't found a single good reason to go
from 512M upto 1G of RAM in a home computer.
Click to expand...

Video or Photo editing is about the only thing I've found so far
(although some of the newer games are threatening ..). Photo editing
(Photoshop) on big pictures will eat all the memory you can throw at it,
and still page.
That's from personal experience, there was hardly any noticeable
difference from 512M to 1G. And in fact, in your case, you have an
Nforce2 motherboard, you have to think long and hard about adding
another stick of memory into it because what you have right now with
two sticks of RAM *is* the highest performance connection scheme.
Adding a third stick will disable the Nforce's dual-channel feature and
put it back into single-channel mode.
Click to expand...

AFAIK that isn't true if you still balance the two channels .. i.e. take
your 2*256 and put them on channel 1, putting the solitary 512Mb module
on channel 2 (most boards have exactly 3 memory sockets, for that very
reason). The modules still need to match in terms of speed (and ideally
manufacturer) I believe (but hey, I always use Crucial).
If you *really* need the additional RAM capacity, then by all means go
for it. Sometimes just having the extra RAM capacity is more important
than a few percentage points of additional RAM performance.

If you want to maintain the existing performance scheme, while at the
same time increasing your RAM capacity, then you'll have to remove the
existing RAM completely and replace them both with equal sized, bigger
RAM modules. That is kind of expensive as you can gather, but you might
be able to make some of the money back by selling off your old RAM to
somebody.

Now, I personally don't have any experience with Nforce boards, I only
know what I've read about them. Somebody who actually uses them might
be more qualified to tell you if the dual-channel feature is worthwhile
maintaining or not.
Click to expand...

It's good for maybe 3-5%, which means it shows up in benchmarks, but is
not really detectable in the real world. However, afaik, it still works
if you balance the channels, even with 3 RAM modules (if it doesn't then
something has been lying to me).
 
Video or Photo editing is about the only thing I've found so far
(although some of the newer games are threatening ..). Photo editing
(Photoshop) on big pictures will eat all the memory you can throw at it,
and still page.
Click to expand...

The reason is that I'm big into City of Heroes...and according to the
task manager, the CoH process grows gradually in size over time, going
from over 200 megabytes of memory usage to *over 300 megabytes* of
memory usage--on a 512 megabyte machine running Windows XP. I've
taken to playing music over my iPod hooked into a second pair of
speakers rather than using iTunes in order to save a bit of memory,
but it still isn't enough; I have to close and restart City of Heroes
about every three hours or it gets way too slow for me to use. (And
when I close the program, instead of quitting immediately to the
desktop sometimes the game just freezes at the quit point, only
releasing to the desktop after a minute or so.)

Seems to me that adding more memory at least couldn't *hurt*...
AFAIK that isn't true if you still balance the two channels .. i.e. take
your 2*256 and put them on channel 1, putting the solitary 512Mb module
on channel 2 (most boards have exactly 3 memory sockets, for that very
reason). The modules still need to match in terms of speed (and ideally
manufacturer) I believe (but hey, I always use Crucial).
Click to expand...

That's what I'm hoping to do. I just need to make sure I have the
right chip. The ones I have in and the one I'd be getting are both
PC3200, and it *looks* like one of the first two chips on that list is
what I need; I'm just confused by the second one being *almost* the
same but costing $10 more.
 
Robotech_Master said:
That's what I'm hoping to do. I just need to make sure I have the
right chip. The ones I have in and the one I'd be getting are both
PC3200, and it *looks* like one of the first two chips on that list is
what I need; I'm just confused by the second one being *almost* the
same but costing $10 more.
Click to expand...

Oh I can answer that, as you noticed they both seem identical, both are
Crucial 512MB CAS 3 latency PC3200 DDR. So what's the difference? Well,
the first one has a voltage of 2.5V while the second one has a voltage
of 2.6V. That's their rated voltage capacity. If you're going to be
doing any kind of overclocking of your RAM, you need the flexibility to
raise its voltage a bit. You might be able to overclock that second one,
and turn it from a CAS 3 latency into a CAS 2.5. If you look at the
third and most expensive DDR RAM, then it's the most expensive because
it's CAS 2 latency; it also has the highest rated voltage at 2.8V.

If overclocking the RAM is unimportant, then go for the cheapest.
Actually, overclocking isn't an option for you, as your existing RAM is
already CAS 3 PC3200, so you'll have to keep your new RAM at the same
timings.

Yousuf Khan
 
Robotech_Master said:
The reason is that I'm big into City of Heroes...and according to the
task manager, the CoH process grows gradually in size over time, going
from over 200 megabytes of memory usage to *over 300 megabytes* of
memory usage--on a 512 megabyte machine running Windows XP. I've
taken to playing music over my iPod hooked into a second pair of
speakers rather than using iTunes in order to save a bit of memory,
but it still isn't enough; I have to close and restart City of Heroes
about every three hours or it gets way too slow for me to use. (And
when I close the program, instead of quitting immediately to the
desktop sometimes the game just freezes at the quit point, only
releasing to the desktop after a minute or so.)
Click to expand...

It sounds more likely to me that you have spyware taking up your memory.
Just doubling the memory is just going to give that spyware more memory
to work with.

Yousuf Khan
 
GSV said:
Bitstring <fs%[email protected]>, from the
wonderful person Yousuf Khan <[email protected]> said



Video or Photo editing is about the only thing I've found so far
(although some of the newer games are threatening ..). Photo editing
(Photoshop) on big pictures will eat all the memory you can throw at it,
and still page.
Click to expand...

I do a bit of that photo editing, and also a bit of the video conversion
stuff, and I haven't noticed much difference after going to 1GB from 512MB.
AFAIK that isn't true if you still balance the two channels .. i.e. take
your 2*256 and put them on channel 1, putting the solitary 512Mb module
on channel 2 (most boards have exactly 3 memory sockets, for that very
reason). The modules still need to match in terms of speed (and ideally
manufacturer) I believe (but hey, I always use Crucial).
Click to expand...

Well what's that going to do? It's going to mean that the first half of
the RAM will be a slight bit faster than the second half of RAM, since
one will be runnning at dual-channel while the second will run at
single-channel.

BTW, are you sure that it's only going to run the third slot with
different timings than the first two?

Yousuf Khan
 
Yousuf Khan said:
upgrading: why do you want to upgrade? I haven't found a single
good reason to go from 512M upto 1G of RAM in a home computer.
Click to expand...

1 games
2 i often run 2 OSes at once (colinux)
Nforce2 motherboard, you have to think long and hard about adding
another stick of memory into it because what you have right now
with two sticks of RAM *is* the highest performance connection
scheme. Adding a third stick will disable the Nforce's
dual-channel feature
Click to expand...

not exactly true, nforce can work with 3 dimms with dual channel


Pozdrawiam.
 
The reason is that I'm big into City of Heroes...and according to the
task manager, the CoH process grows gradually in size over time, going
from over 200 megabytes of memory usage to *over 300 megabytes* of
memory usage--on a 512 megabyte machine running Windows XP. I've
taken to playing music over my iPod hooked into a second pair of
speakers rather than using iTunes in order to save a bit of memory,
but it still isn't enough; I have to close and restart City of Heroes
about every three hours or it gets way too slow for me to use. (And
when I close the program, instead of quitting immediately to the
desktop sometimes the game just freezes at the quit point, only
releasing to the desktop after a minute or so.)

Seems to me that adding more memory at least couldn't *hurt*...


That's what I'm hoping to do. I just need to make sure I have the
right chip. The ones I have in and the one I'd be getting are both
PC3200, and it *looks* like one of the first two chips on that list is
what I need; I'm just confused by the second one being *almost* the
same but costing $10 more.
Click to expand...

The second module, the one, labeled 8T has 8x512M-bit devices (memory
chips) on it (I know since I bought two of them - perfect for Athlon64
setups); the other has 16x256M-bit devices. Either one will probably work
fine in your system but there's a better chance of optimal performance for
you with the 16-device version.

This whole issue of Nvidia's nForce2 memory architecture -- dual 64-bit
channels and twin-channel 128-bit mode -- has never been well explained nor
resolved at the mbrd level. Nvidia hasn't helped by refusing to release
Data Sheets for their chipsets but according to the
nForce2_Synchronous_Mode.pdf document available here:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/nf2_tech.html by clicking on "NVIDIA nForce2
Memory Architecture", there is no need to balance size, speed or
organization of DIMMs to get twin-channel 128bit mode... though that could
be over a limited range of addresses if modules are mismatched. The mbrd
mfrs seem less sure about this and give a variety of mumbled responses to
such questions... possibly because they can't make it work, or the BIOS
programming to do it is a PITA.

Bottom line: with your two existing DIMMs, with I expect 8x256M-bit chips
each(??), in DIMM slots 1&2 and the abovementioned 512MB DIMM with
8x256M-bit chips on each side in slot 3, you have the best chance of
getting the highest performance available. Basically, assuming what I've
said above, you'll have two "ranks" of 256MBytes on one channel and two
ranks of 256MBytes on the other.

Let us know how you make out.:-)

Oh and Merry Christmas to you and everbody else.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
 
Bitstring <[email protected]>, from the wonderful person
Yousuf Khan said:
Well what's that going to do? It's going to mean that the first half of
the RAM will be a slight bit faster than the second half of RAM, since
one will be runnning at dual-channel while the second will run at
single-channel.

BTW, are you sure that it's only going to run the third slot with
different timings than the first two?
Click to expand...

I think you are confused. The first two slots together are on one
channel, the third slot is on the second channel. Rumour has it that the
system (Nforce 2, A7N8X) will then run =all= the memory in dual channel
mode, as long as the amount on each channel is the same (2*256 on
channel1, 1*512 on channel 2). I

f you snarf it up and just stick the new 512Mb module in the currently
free slot, you'll have 256+512 on channel 1 and 256 on channel 2, and
that apparently (although the documentation is massively unclear) stops
the thing from running in dual channel mode (or maybe you get 256*2 in
dual channel mode, and 512 in single channel mode, but I suspect not).
 
Oh I can answer that, as you noticed they both seem identical, both are
Crucial 512MB CAS 3 latency PC3200 DDR. So what's the difference? Well,
the first one has a voltage of 2.5V while the second one has a voltage
of 2.6V. That's their rated voltage capacity.
Click to expand...

I think you'll find that most DDR DIMMs now are specing 2.6V or more for
their rated timings. At www.crucial.com, I don't see 2.5V for any of their
184-pin DIMMs. As mentioned elsewhere, the real difference here is the
number of devices on the module: the one labeled 8T, which is not
specifically mentioned at www.crucial.com, has 8x512Mbit chips.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
 
It sounds more likely to me that you have spyware taking up your memory.
Just doubling the memory is just going to give that spyware more memory
to work with.
Click to expand...

I've run the latest versions of both Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and Spybot
Search & Destroy on the thing, as well as virus checkers...what else
can I do?
 
GSV said:
I think you are confused. The first two slots together are on one
channel, the third slot is on the second channel. Rumour has it that the
system (Nforce 2, A7N8X) will then run =all= the memory in dual channel
mode, as long as the amount on each channel is the same (2*256 on
channel1, 1*512 on channel 2).
Click to expand...

So how does it run a single DIMM as a dual-channel?

Yousuf Khan
 
RusH said:
not a single dimm, but 3 dimms in 1+2 configuration
it works
Click to expand...

Oh, I see, well if it can do that, then that's good. I've only ever
seen dual-channel working with two identical sticks of RAM.
Yousuf Khan
 
That Tinyurl points to a Newegg listing. I don't think it's specific to
your motherboard because it lists the last two parts as DDR2, which
definitely are not compatible with your motherboard. Your motherboard
can only take DDR RAM not DDR2 RAM. So your only choices are really the
first three.

You should have also gone directly to the Crucial website itself and
looked up your motherboard on their online web lookup. Even if you don't
buy directly from Crucial itself, the information they give is useful
for reference:
Click to expand...

I agree, though I don't see whay anyone would buy Crucial memory from
other than Crucial. While I like NewEgg a lot, Crucial makes them look
like everyone else. It's hard to beat the free 2nd day air (orders
over $40) too..

BTW, this was a Crucial Christmas. Santa dropped a 512MB stick of
unbuffered PC2700 off for the kid and had pair of registered [*]512MB
PC3200s on one of his sleighs for me, though that sleigh got stuck in snow
somewhere in the midwest. :-(

[*] I sent Mrs. Claus a link to the 2GB sticks, but $1800 was a bit much.
Evidently I wasn't that good this year. ;-)

<snip, others answered the dual-channel issue better than I could>
 
It sounds more likely to me that you have spyware taking up your memory.
Click to expand...

Sounds more like a memory leak in CoH, to me.
Just doubling the memory is just going to give that spyware more memory
to work with.
Click to expand...

If you have a bigger leak, you get a bigger bucket. ;-)
 
I agree, though I don't see whay anyone would buy Crucial memory from
other than Crucial. While I like NewEgg a lot, Crucial makes them look
like everyone else. It's hard to beat the free 2nd day air (orders
over $40) too..
Click to expand...

I'd agree with buying from Crucial *but* the 8T DIMM which I got for my
Athlon64 system is not listed as a separate part at www.crucial.com.
Though people claim to have made an Athlon64 work at DDR400 with 4 ranks
of memory, AMD does not approve that configuration. I only have two for
the moment but you never know... down the road.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
 
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