K, I am upgrading my comp. I am looking at getting a Radeon 8500 card to replace my TNT2. I am also going to replace my Pentium 3 733 with a new Athlon XP. I am probably going to get the 1800+. Then the RAM, I have 256 megs of SD ram. my question is, what is DDR and SDR? I know i have to get DDR if I am to get an athlon xp, and I know it is better. THe only thing i can think of is that SD stands for Single Density and DD is double density, but that is just a guess. Anyway, What is the significance of the PC number on RAM? Is that just the speed of it?
K, so the card costs 179, the cpu and motherboard costs 249 and the 512 megs of DDR costs 75, so that is 503 dollars. Any suggestions? could you clear up some of the difference between the same pieces of hardware.
Thanks
The terms are actually SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM.
SDRAM = Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory
DDR = Double Data Rate
DDR-SDRAM effectively doubles the bandwidth of your memory allowing it to transfer more data in the same given time-slice as regular SDRAM (sort of like going from a two lane to a four lane highway). However, for various reasons, this doubling of the data rate does not translate into a doubling of performance. Overall PC performance improvements on a DDR system generally range around 15% better than SDRAM. Still, that’s significant and worthwhile. Some programs benefit more than others from the added bandwidth.
DDR-RAM is very similar to regular SDRAM. Basically the engineers are playing tricks with your system by allowing data to be carried on both the rising and falling edge of a clock cycle which effectively doubles the data rate. Tricks or no you still need RAM built to the DDR spec to work that way…no tricking the RAM you already have.
The PC number on the RAM gives you its clock speed (which is separate from the CPU’s clocks speed although they are interlinked when measuring overall performance). So PC-100 RAM runs on a 100MHz Front Side Bus. PC-133 is 133MHz and so on. PC-266 is really PC-133 RAM double pumped (DDR) to 266. As far as the CPU is concerned it is sitting on a 133MHz bus even if the RAM is doing 266. The clock cycle is still 133 but, as described above, the data comes through twice as fast thus giving an effective rate of 266.
Sounds like you’re getting excellent prices to me. You need a fan for the CPU though. VERY important on Athlon chips (and Intel chips for that matter). Don’t cheap out on the fan either…they are NOT all created equal.
The PC number on DDR RAM is not the bus clock speed, but the aproximate kilobaud rate of the RAM. This is in contrast to older SDRAM, which is as described by Whack-a-mole. This was done as a marketing ploy since it is generally assumed that people think higher numbers means better. To figure out the bus clock speed it will run at, you divide by 16 (bits per full clock cycle). So PC 1600 runs at 100 MHz, PC 2100 at 133 MHz.
I will submit a full report when I reach the castle.
K.
Additional things you need:
Possibly a new case, depending on whether the current one allows you to have a good cooling setup.
New Power Supply, maybe. You need AT LEAST a 300W AMD-Approved power supply, preferably 350 or 400W. The computer won’t actually draw near that much, it just insures clean power.
As for component reccommendations:
http://www.newegg.com is a good online shop that should have nearly everything you need.
Motherboard: Quality is VERY important. I’d go with the Abit KR7A-RAID Via KT266A-based motherboard. Not available yet, but it will be the best on the market when its around. If you don’t want to wait, or want to save money, check out the ECS K7S5A. It’s less than $60, and decent. No overclocking support though, and only two memory slots of each type.
RAM: Quality is also necessary here. I’d get Crucial PC-2100 DDR. You need “Registered” RAM if you intend to use more than two DDR cards on the average motherboard, of if you plan to use more than three on the Abit KR7A-RAID. Otherwise, regular unbuffered is cheaper and better. It’s $31 per 256MB, with free shipping. http://www.crucial.com
Case: If you need a new one, the Enlight EN-7237 is cheap and of passable quality. The Fong Kai 320ATX is what I use in my personal system. It RULES, but its $100.
Cooling: The Thermaltake Volcano 6Cu (NOT the 6Cu+) at http://www.newegg.com is a great cooler. It’s quiet, inexpensive, and can keep even AMD’s hottest chip, the Athlon 1.4Ghz, nice and cool. Last I checked it was out of stock, so you may have to look elsewhere for it.
As a final note, remember that you’ll need to replace any ISA cards (the ones that go in the black slots) with PCI, as ISA slots are no longer included in modern motherboards.
Hope this helps!
The $249 for the processor included the motherboard and fan. “with cpu - AMD Athlon XP 1800+ w/ Fan & Heatsink, Full ATX - 5 PCI - pc133 & PC2100 ddr” My power source is an APC BACK-UPS 500, it was pretty expensive so I am pretty sure it is competent. I am pretty sure that my case will work(it’s a Dell Dimension XPS B733r.) Anyway, yeah…
When I spoke of power supply I meant the power supply inside the computer, not what you plug it into. Also, that heatsink+fan will almost certainly be inadequate, as included ones nearly always are.
You should also check what motherboard it comes with, as a low quality motherboard makes for a crashy system.
As for the case, I’m not familiar with that specific one, but it is probably insufficient. OEM cases generally have poor cooling, and with a modern, fast CPU a single dinky fan or vent holes do not cut it.
Hope this helps.
so we have ddr-ram, sdram, sram, vram, but what is nvram?
Non-volatile RAM, RAM that can store data between boots, with no power. (Not really no power, but no external power. Usually kept refreshed using a battery).
is nv-ram better than dynamic ram (dram)? is there any one “best” ram, or are there adv/disadv of each?
If you’re going from a Pentium 3 to an Athlon you will need to replace the mobo… and almost certainly the Power Supply as well. Just because the computer cost a lot doesn’t mean quality hardware was used (no offense meant). As mentioned, you will more than likely have to change the case.
I’m not sure if NV-RAM is the same thing as SRAM (Static RAM) but it sounds like it.
SRAM is probably your ‘best’ RAM but ‘best’ is a relative thing. As long as there is some power to the device (such as from a battery) SRAM will keep what is stored. This has several advantages over DRAM (Dynamic RAM). Your boot process would be incredibly quick since data wouldn’t have to be read into memory (it’s already there). SRAM also doesn’t have to go through a refresh phase which DRAM does. This added step for DRAM significantly slows it down compared to SRAM.
So why isn’t everyone using SRAM? For one thing SRAM can only hold about 1/4 of the data as a DRAM chip of similar complexity. For another thing SRAM is very expensive compared to DRAM…add the fact that you’d need 4x as many chips for the same amount of memory and it becomes REALLY expensive. As a result we use DRAM most of the time. SRAM is generally relegated to use in caches where the added benefits more clearly outweigh the costs and the fact that caches are relatively small memory-wise so the total cost isn’t too exhorbitant.
Unfortunately a discussion on memory types and their advantages and disadvantages gets tricky and lengthy. I remember when there was only one kind of memory to worry about. Now they are all over the place. To simplify I’ll keep it to the two main competitors right now: RDRAM and DDR-SDRAM.
RDRAM (or Rambus DRAM) is a proprietary standard developed by Rambus Inc. in conjunction with Intel. Intel had two motivations for getting Rambus developed…they needed an extremely high bandwidth memory to properly leverage the Pentium IV and future chips and they wanted to own the PC platform front to back to help edge out competitors.
RDRAM does deliver on the bandwidth providing higher stats in that category then any other memory type. Unfortunately there are two aspects to memory speed as it affects system performance: Bandwidth and Latency. It turns out that most of todays applications for the PC are much more sensitive to latency than bandwidth. RDRAM falls flat on its face in the latency department. As a result RDRAM equipped systems showed no improvement, or even worse results, than regularly equipped SDRAM systems. Even if the RDRAM system pulled ahead in some areas it didn’t justify its cost. RDRAM when it first hit the streets was 5x or more expensive than SDRAM of the same size (this is a proprietary standard so manufacturing lines had to be completely retooled, they were getting horrendous amounts of bad chips off of the initial lines and Rambus Inc. charged a royalty on every chip). This was a BAD thing for Intel. Add to that Rambus Inc.'s heavy handed litigious attitude (suing everyone in site) and Intel was in a really bad place. Unfortunately Intel was stuck in bed with these guys and had to forge ahead. After manufacturing lines spun-up better, Rambus lowered royalties and Intel offered HUGE incentives RDRAM is now only slightly more expensive than DDR-SDRAM. Also, the Pentium-IV CPU from Intel can make better use of RDRAM than the P-III could so the incredibly embarrassing stats of much cheaper SDRAM equipped systems blowing RDRAM systems out of the water are behind them.
DDR-SDRAM, on the other hand, is an open standard. That is, anyone is free to grab a copy of the specification and build some without paying royalties to anyone. In addition, the DDR spec requires only very minor modifications to existing fabrication lines. While DDR-SDRAM doesn’t quite equal the bandwidth capabilities of RDRAM the best stuff comes pretty close. DDR-SDRAM does, however, have better latency characteristics than RDRAM. Add it all up and a top flight, RDRAM equipped Pentium-IV sports performance stats very close to a top flight, DDR-SDRAM equipped Athlon system. Depending on the benchmarks you use they can trade places for best but they both perform pretty well. For example, media applications that benefit heavily from the streaming capabilities perform better on RDRAM system. Systems running a top notch game that are more sensitive to latency run better on a DDR-SDRAM system. Still, both are pretty close so it’s not too big a deal.
Which do you choose? Well, if you’re going for a Pentium-IV system you’ve got no choice…it’s RDRAM for you. VIA Technologies was about to market a motherboard that could take a P-IV and pair it with DDR-SDRAM but Intel sued them to stop it. I’m not sure about the status there right now. If you are going for and AMD Athlon system you can’t run RDRAM if you wanted to. They are all SDRAM or DDR-SDRAM systems.
In general I lean towards the DDR-SDRAM equipped Athlon systems. They are cheaper and perform just as well if not better than the Intel systems. Add to that that I LOATHE Rambus as a company and how they go about their business reinforces that view. Indeed, Intel has separated themselves from Rambus. They currently have to play together but Intel pointedly did not invite Rambus to their last meeting that was to establish design specs for future products (i.e. 3-5 years down the road) which was a HUGE snub to Rambus…couldn’t happen to nicer guys in my view.