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#1
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DDR-1 ?
I am upgrading some older P-4 and AMD equivalent machines and recently
purchased some dirt cheap Chinese RAM on eBay. ( 1gig sticks 400mhz) The site specifically said it works with VIA, SiS and Nvidia3/4 chipsets and indeed it does...so all is fine however I got documentation with the RAM stating that it does not work with Intel, Mac or MSI motherboards etc. Just for the heck of it I tried some in an Intel chipset machine and it did not even post or give an error message. Just curious what kind of odd ball ram this is. Up until now any DDR-1 400mhz I've had worked in any machine I've tried it in. |
#2
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DDR-1 ?
philo wrote:
I am upgrading some older P-4 and AMD equivalent machines and recently purchased some dirt cheap Chinese RAM on eBay. ( 1gig sticks 400mhz) The site specifically said it works with VIA, SiS and Nvidia3/4 chipsets and indeed it does...so all is fine however I got documentation with the RAM stating that it does not work with Intel, Mac or MSI motherboards etc. Just for the heck of it I tried some in an Intel chipset machine and it did not even post or give an error message. Just curious what kind of odd ball ram this is. Up until now any DDR-1 400mhz I've had worked in any machine I've tried it in. They're a 16 chip single rank setup using x4 chips. The Intel chipset documentation, documents accepted x8 chip and x16 chip configurations. On those, they're arranged in two ranks on the UDIMM. As an example of a typical DIMM (all my DDR400 are this way), they're two ranks, 8 chips having x8 width on each rank, and each rank occupies one side of the DIMM. The DIMM data bus is 64 bits wide. A rank seeks to match that width. A DIMM can have multiple ranks, only one of which is chip_selected during access. On registered server DIMMs (RDIMM), you can have as many as four ranks. The register chips provide buffering and fanout for driving larger arrays, at the price of an extra clock cycle of latency in the address/control path. Typically a registered DIMM will use x4 chips, as a means of achieving a higher capacity DIMM. So that's where the actual market for x4 chips is, rather than the not-so-compatible 1GB DDR400 high density DIMM. Inside each memory chip, they do some similar things. They have "banks" in there, or rectangles of memory bits. And the third dimension inside the chip is a "bank". That's why "rank" is used when describing the array at the memory chip level on the DIMM. Since the name "bank" was already taken :-) ******* What's funny about the DIMM you just bought (16 chip x4 width), is no company wants to document one of those :-) If I buy a DIMM from Kingston, I can get a datasheet, where I can see I'm getting two ranks, of 8 chips of 8x width. But the generic companies who make the unbranded UDIMM with the x4 chips on it, they *never* seek to document what they've done. Instead, they couch their product description in terms of "works with VIA, SIS, NVidia, and not so much with Intel". Leaving the customer to figure out how they've been snookered. Paul |
#3
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DDR-1 ?
On 11/30/2013 03:59 PM, Paul wrote:
philo wrote: I am upgrading some older P-4 and AMD equivalent machines and recently purchased some dirt cheap Chinese RAM on eBay. ( 1gig sticks 400mhz) The site specifically said it works with VIA, SiS and Nvidia3/4 chipsets and indeed it does...so all is fine however I got documentation with the RAM stating that it does not work with Intel, Mac or MSI motherboards etc. Just for the heck of it I tried some in an Intel chipset machine and it did not even post or give an error message. Just curious what kind of odd ball ram this is. Up until now any DDR-1 400mhz I've had worked in any machine I've tried it in. They're a 16 chip single rank setup using x4 chips. The Intel chipset documentation, documents accepted x8 chip and x16 chip configurations. On those, they're arranged in two ranks on the UDIMM. As an example of a typical DIMM (all my DDR400 are this way), they're two ranks, 8 chips having x8 width on each rank, and each rank occupies one side of the DIMM. The DIMM data bus is 64 bits wide. A rank seeks to match that width. A DIMM can have multiple ranks, only one of which is chip_selected during access. On registered server DIMMs (RDIMM), you can have as many as four ranks. The register chips provide buffering and fanout for driving larger arrays, at the price of an extra clock cycle of latency in the address/control path. Typically a registered DIMM will use x4 chips, as a means of achieving a higher capacity DIMM. So that's where the actual market for x4 chips is, rather than the not-so-compatible 1GB DDR400 high density DIMM. Inside each memory chip, they do some similar things. They have "banks" in there, or rectangles of memory bits. And the third dimension inside the chip is a "bank". That's why "rank" is used when describing the array at the memory chip level on the DIMM. Since the name "bank" was already taken :-) ******* What's funny about the DIMM you just bought (16 chip x4 width), is no company wants to document one of those :-) If I buy a DIMM from Kingston, I can get a datasheet, where I can see I'm getting two ranks, of 8 chips of 8x width. But the generic companies who make the unbranded UDIMM with the x4 chips on it, they *never* seek to document what they've done. Instead, they couch their product description in terms of "works with VIA, SIS, NVidia, and not so much with Intel". Leaving the customer to figure out how they've been snookered. Paul Thank you I am very happy all the specific chipsets that work and do not work came were documented...however since most of my older machines are Intel, I am not going to purchase this kind of RAM again. After I posted I Googled for hi-density vs low density |
#4
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DDR-1 ?
On 11/30/2013 4:59 PM, Paul wrote:
snip... What's funny about the DIMM you just bought (16 chip x4 width), is no company wants to document one of those :-) If I buy a DIMM from Kingston, I can get a datasheet, where I can see I'm getting two ranks, of 8 chips of 8x width. But the generic companies who make the unbranded UDIMM with the x4 chips on it, they *never* seek to document what they've done. Instead, they couch their product description in terms of "works with VIA, SIS, NVidia, and not so much with Intel". Leaving the customer to figure out how they've been snookered. Paul Do you really think that the customer has been "snookered" when the seller says that "it will work with these but it won't work with those" and they are being truthful? If they said nothing at all or stated that the product worked universally then I'd question the honesty of the transaction but when they tell the literal truth...? |
#5
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DDR-1 ?
John McGaw wrote:
On 11/30/2013 4:59 PM, Paul wrote: snip... What's funny about the DIMM you just bought (16 chip x4 width), is no company wants to document one of those :-) If I buy a DIMM from Kingston, I can get a datasheet, where I can see I'm getting two ranks, of 8 chips of 8x width. But the generic companies who make the unbranded UDIMM with the x4 chips on it, they *never* seek to document what they've done. Instead, they couch their product description in terms of "works with VIA, SIS, NVidia, and not so much with Intel". Leaving the customer to figure out how they've been snookered. Paul Do you really think that the customer has been "snookered" when the seller says that "it will work with these but it won't work with those" and they are being truthful? If they said nothing at all or stated that the product worked universally then I'd question the honesty of the transaction but when they tell the literal truth...? It's not the original buyer I'm worried about. It's the resale market (Ebay), where the original seller won't remember to post the disclaimer (having thrown all docs away the day of the original purchase). Then someone buys that crap, and they post here asking why it doesn't work. This is why we have so-called standards for memory. What should be released into the channel, is stuff that works without compromise. Then later, if some idiot throws away their documentation, sells the RAM on, we can be fairly certain the new purchaser won't get snookered. What I can't understand, is how those x4 chips are cheaper to buy. The package they come in, I don't think it has a lower pin count than the x8 chips. They use a common outline for the IC package. If they charged the same for the x4 as for the x8, then there would be no incentive to releasing that kind of memory UDIMM with the x4 chips on it. ******* Mushkin used to keep a web site with some technical memos on it. One of their testing efforts, was testing that x4 stuff. In actual fact, for some of the so-called compatible chipsets, you might be able to drive one stick of the x4 stuff. But if you fill all the slots in the motherboard with it, then it throws errors. The Mushkin page with this information, disappeared long ago, and Mushkin set up their site so that archive.org could not archive the page in question. And I don't even have a print of the test results to present as evidence. It could be, that just the SIS chipset could drive all slots populated that way. ******* Price seems to over rule common sense, even with the best of manufacturers. Kingston offers data sheets for their RAM. Every product with a certain SKU, should match the architecture info in the datasheet. Yet, for one of the relatively recent products, they broke with tradition, played the spot market for memory chips, bought two different chip densities. Now, when you used the Kingston search engine, it might say that product works with my VIA motherboard, when in fact of the two compositions they were actually making, one of them was wrong. And all because some days, one of those chip types was a few cents cheaper, then the next day the other type would be cheaper. Normally, they would make a different SKU for each composition, and keep everyone happy. I guess someone worked out the cost of documentation and stock keeping, and decided it would be fun to throw out a few curve balls to the buying public. Both compositions offer the same capacity (1GB), but one composition used a higher density chip than the other (and the affected chipsets don't have the extra address bit needed to work with the denser chip). Paul |
#6
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DDR-1 ?
On Saturday, November 30, 2013 6:34:27 PM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
John McGaw wrote: Do you really think that the customer has been "snookered" when the seller says that "it will work with these but it won't work with those" and they are being truthful? If they said nothing at all or stated that the product worked universally then I'd question the honesty of the transaction but when they tell the literal truth...? It's not the original buyer I'm worried about. It's the resale market (Ebay), where the original seller won't remember to post the disclaimer (having thrown all docs away the day of the original purchase). Then someone buys that crap, and they post here asking why it doesn't work. This is why we have so-called standards for memory. What should be released into the channel, is stuff that works without compromise. Then later, if some idiot throws away their documentation, sells the RAM on, we can be fairly certain the new purchaser won't get snookered. I'd like to know what standards the makers of retail memory modules follow when they take 1333MHz RAM chips and use them for modules they rate for anywhere from 1600MHz - 2666MHz (proved by APHnetworks.com and XbitLabs.com reviews), especially when a lot of those modules fail user testing. |
#7
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DDR-1 ?
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#8
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DDR-1 ?
Paul writes:
Price seems to over rule common sense, even with the best of manufacturers. Kingston offers data sheets for their RAM. Every product with a certain SKU, should match the architecture info in the datasheet. Yet, for one of the relatively recent products, they broke with tradition, played the spot market for memory chips, bought two different chip densities. Is that really anything new with Kingston? I vaguely remember having two pairs of Kingston DIMMs in my computer years ago. Wondered how come the modules had the same part number but different chips manufacturer, different density and PCB... I figured it's just Kingston being Kingston. Not a problem then or now though. USUALLY Kingston tends to be the cheapest DIMM manufacturer in these parts so I mostly buy them. |
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