~AlicGinnis~ said:
Some of my 256 MB PC133 sticks have chips on one side,
and some have them on both sides.
Is there a quality or speed difference between them, and if so
which is the better stick?
thanks,
al
One difference between them, is the single sided one would be
"high density" and the double sided one would be "low density".
That makes a difference to a chipset like 440BX, and the
double sided one might only be half detected. On other
chipsets, it might not be an issue. (I have a couple other
motherboards that wouldn't care either way.)
If the density is not an issue, single sided designs clock
to higher speeds. There used to be sticks of RAM which offered
PC150 or PC166, and to operate at that speed, there would be
an advantage to the stick being single sided. As a matter of
fact, some time ago, I checked a RAM manufacturer site, and
they actually had SDRAM chips for sale which could have performed
at PC200 (the RAM might be used in embedded applications now).
But anything higher than PC133 DIMMs have not been
offered at retail for some time. So no one can make a
business case for making such a product. There are still
new PC133 sticks for sale at retail, and Crucial has
the low density 256MB (16 chip) ones if you need them.
Paul
