[plug] Hardware: RAM questions

[Jason Nicholls]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 11:02:54AM +0800, Burnt Damper wrote:
> 1) Is it correct to assume that the 133Mhz RAM will work in this machine
> (obviously it will only run at the 100Mhz of the CPU - but will it work as
> well as effectively as getting the normal 100MHz stuff?) 

It should work, until I recently upgraded I'd been using PC133 ram at 100Mhz
for over a year.

> 2) If it would work - is it fair to assume that it would be even more stable
> - due to the fact that it was designed to run so much faster?

I think that'd be a false statement. Stability is due to a number of factors,
just because the chip is rated to go faster doesn't mean it'll be more
reliable at 100Mhz. If you want reliable RAM, purchase quality components. If
you don't know what brands to look for then take a look at some of the
Hardware review sites like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware. FYI, Kingsmax is
aparently very good. I'm using that and Apacer in my boxes and never had any
problems.

> 3) Is there any disadvantage 

The kernel documentation says you need to compile in HIGHMEM support for 
system memory in the 1-4gb range or higher. If there is some performance 
related cost in doing so I'm sure it'd be negligible compared to the 
performance gain *if* the memory is needed (for caching and rather than swap).

On the other hand, assuming some performance cost, if you don't require so
much system RAM (ie: 1Gb or less will be sufficient) then it'd be a
performance hit for no good reason.

Have a read of: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/jl3/features-2.3-2.html as it talks
about HIGHMEM and includes some info on the performance hit introduced.



Regards,

Jason Nicholls
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