Ram Terms

50Cent

What does pc3700 actually mean and how do i work out the throughput of it etc? I mean i did it in class there the other week but i forget what it means and how to do it. I know it means somthing about the total amount of info it can process or something, but could someone who actually knows for sure enlighten me?

Merci!

CivilServant

PC3700 means there's a standard bandwidth that type of memory can reach, in this case it's 3.7 gigabytes per second. PC3700 is DDR1 ram so it operates at 233 Mhz fsb, double that and you get 466MHz which is the theorectical opertaing speed.

vasch_ro

does it really make a big difference with performance say with games etc on the speed of RAM, I have Pc 2100 1 Gb in an nforce 2 board and I was wondering was it worth upgrading,

the mobo will support up to PC3200 , I wonder in real terms would I get a tangible beneifit. Any thoughts welcome I know this is a bit off topic but it does concern ram terms as such

spooky donkey

the benifit in going up a ram speed is very small most of the time!
It all depends on youre chip set but an increase of 3 or 4 percent is what i i have noticed in in 3d mark tests. Very small and not worth scraping youre old rom for faster!

Pc2100 = 266mhz
Pc2700 = 333mhz
pc3200 = 400mhz

its all based on a factor of 8!

CivilServant

does it really make a big difference with performance say with games etc on the speed of RAM, I have Pc 2100 1 Gb in an nforce 2 board and I was wondering was it worth upgrading

Everything is relative. If you upgraded from a p3 to an nforce2 based board with 1 gig of ram then yes you'd see a huge gain in performance. But if you upgraded from 512 to 1gig of ram then no probably not really. Just like the 80/20 rule says you spend 20% to get 80% of the results and the other 80% is spent on 20% of the results. If you know what I mean, after a certain point you're going to get diminishing returns no matter how much money you pump into it.

My advice is get the best value for money at that moment in time. eg. graphics card wise it'd be a 9500/9600 but by the end of the year it could be 9700, ram wise I think 512 is enough to spend on ram for the moment.

vasch_ro

thanks I will probably hold on to my trusty Pc2100 Ram and try and buy 9800 ati card when they come out for retail, the mobo is asus a7n8x deluxe but I had a feeling if I was to upgrade the Ram speed it wouldn't really make a noticeable difference.Cheers!