Am I stuck with RDRAM?

RichLather · Post by **RichLather** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 2:27 pm

Here's the short & skinny:

We've got a year-old Gateway P4 with 128MB of RAM onboard. Santa didn't bring me the 512MB kit I'd hoped for (but I did get a schweet GeForce4 Ti 4400 128MB graphics card) so I'd like to know if I have any options regarding what RAM I can use.

Gateway's terribly unhelpful support site seems to suggest that 800mhz RDRAM RIMM modules are my only option for additional memory.

Right now, 512MB of that kind of RAM runs about $300...but I see all kinds of other forms of RAM going for loads less. Am I screwed?

Getting a new comp is not an option at the moment...my wife will be getting a new computer for her personal use, and it's long past due for her to have one. Her current comp is a slow-ass laptop running Win98, which she bought about 4 years ago. Thing takes about 5 minutes to even boot up, so she deserves getting one of her own; then I can fill up our "shared" one with AMV stuff.

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 3:20 pm

Take a look inside the computer. If all the memory slots look the same (which I'm about 99% sure they will) then yes, you are stuck with only one type of memory and I'm guessing that they're RIMM slots, and only RDRAM can go in those.

RDRAM itself shouldn't be going for that much. I went to Pricewatch and found these prices which look far more reasonable. If you're confident you can install memory yourself it should be cheaper than buying a kit. And installing RAM shouldn't be too difficult even for the non-computer inclined as long as you have gentle hands and don't subscribe to the philosophy of "if it don't fit, push harder."

RichLather · Post by **RichLather** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 5:01 pm

Now that ain't bad at all.

I'm at work, and don't have my computer in front of me, but I know it does have 4 slots, two of which have 64MB RIMMs and the other two are covered with "placeholders"--I don't recall the technical term, but I know their function.

I would assume then that all 4 slots are for RDRAM RIMMs. Now I need to determine if they're non-ECC...

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 7:51 pm

10 to 1 I am going to say that it's not ECC, since that usually not a consumer part.

The "place holders" are called CRIMMS.

RDRAM needs to be installed in pairs :p (well PW pretty much told you that).

As long as it says PC800 compatible, you should be OK. But I would go for something that actually says PC800 on it.

RDRAM is not THAT bad so long as it's used with a P4(well you can't use it with anything else). Just the way it was designed kind of really majorly sucks. Needing to install it in pairs, latency issues when you start to add more ram(since it's all serial), RAMBUS being a bitch to DDR manufactures...

Also Rambus is going to be facing tough times what with intel moving away from RDRAM... :\

Oh and atleast they gave you RDRAM, alot of companies were dishing out regular SDRAM with their P4's to give them a "value" price, but reg SDRAM does not have the bandwidth to keep with with a P4 and the P4 gets basically strangled

~klinky

RichLather · Post by **RichLather** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 8:37 pm

These'd be going into a P4 for certain.

Another thing I've always heard is that if you're gonna have all your slots filled with RAM modules, they should all be the same type (i.e. 4 64's giving you 256).

What bad hoodoo would I put myself into if I left the existing 64's in their slots, but replaced the CRIMMs with a pair of 128's, giving a total of 384? I know that's very non-standard. Would it simply not work?

If that's the case, I'll just get a pair of 128's now and save up for another pair in the near future, thus getting the original 512 I wanted.

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 9:28 pm

You should have no problems whatsoever if you were to, say, pop in 128ers but leave in your two 64ers.

You should even be able to pop in a single 512, so long as you have those little bridge thingies in all the rest of the slots.

FurryCurry · Post by **FurryCurry** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 9:48 pm

I'm pretty sure you have to install in pairs, AND use the continuity thingies in the empty slots.
There is one special board or chipset that can get around that when paired with a special module, but 10 to 1 he doesn't have that board.

Get a couple 128's, maybe the price on RAMBUS memory will continue to drop. If not, think about holding out for a new board/cpu/RAM a little further in the future instead.

RichLather · Post by **RichLather** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 10:01 pm

Thnaks, all.

I'm going to play it safe and get a pair of 128s to start, then add another pair later on.

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 10:24 pm

FurryCurry wrote:I'm pretty sure you have to install in pairs, AND use the continuity thingies in the empty slots.
There is one special board or chipset that can get around that when paired with a special module, but 10 to 1 he doesn't have that board.

Nope. You can install them individually, as long as the fake-RIMMs are in place. (It is possible to install only a single RIMM into a system, and many cheaper systems include just one RIMM.)

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 10:59 pm

Well I do believe you can go with

1RIMM + CRIMM
or
2RIMMs of the same size.

Just if you install a pair, the pair must be of equal size, but you can have two pairs, with different sizes.

So two 64MB + two 128MB.

Or even probably two 64MB + 128MB + 1 CRIMM.

~klinky