Computers Articles - System Memory Explained


by SANDRA PRIOR - Date: 2009-07-19 - Word Count: 465 Share This!

In 1999 a new type of memory entered the market with the support of Intel. Intel saw Rambus as a way to make loads of money and therefore invested huge sums of money in the new technology and company. Direct Rambus DRAM suffered from a few problems.

Firstly modules had to be installed in pairs and if any slots were left unused they had to be filled with CRIMMs (Continuity Rambus In-line Memory Modules). The latencies of RDRAM were higher than DDR and the costs were higher. Intel however felt that RDRAM was worth the risk and it even bundled RIMMs with some of its Pentium 4 processors to increase the uptake of RDRAM.

RDRAM failed to take off but the reasons are not as simple as they seem: a number of major SDRAM manufacturers had been price fixing during the period that RDRAM had been introduced to the market.

While RDRAM failed to penetrate the PC market, it made an impact on the console market. The Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation 2 both used RDRAM and the PlayStation 3 uses the next generation of RDRAM, XDR DRAM (Extreme Data Rate DRAM) which has up to 28.8GB/S of bandwidth.

JEDEC

JEDEC is the organization that finalizes standards for the solid-state industry. In terms of memory it is the body that decides what the standard voltage for a DDR2 module should be or the frequency at which it should operate. Without JEDEC the entire memory market would be flooded with memory at varying speeds without a structure to the speed categories. In essence JEDEC keeps the law in memory town.

Upgrading RAM

One of the most intangible upgrades is memory. You'll see very little benefit in terms of frame rates or encoding as that's all dependable on the GPU and CPU. Where you will see a difference though is in general Windows performance, especially at multitasking. Indeed moving from 2GB to 4GB gives you the ability to [Alt]+[Tab] without having to wait an age for the computer to became usable again.

Realistically though, 2GB is still more than adequate for most of your needs. In these days of cheap DDR2, sticking in an extra 2GB on top of that won't impact your wallet too much. Don't expect to be gaming any smoother though, but if you spend a lot of time being productive with your time, for example using image manipulation programs, then the memory upgrade is worth it.

It's also worth remembering although the 32-bit versions of Windows can see 4GB of RAM, that's including your video memory, if you've got a 1GB graphics card and 4GB system RAM, Windows will only be using 3GB of that memory.

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Related Tags: memory, windows, intel, multitasking, ddr2, sdram, dram, rambus

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