[plug] Hardware: RAM questions

[Carl Gherardi]

On Mon, 15 Oct 2001, Jason Nicholls wrote:

> 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.
>

I've done the same but i have heard of some problems.

> > 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?

NO! Every clock cycle the charge for each bit needs to be refreshed. If
the RAM is designed to be refreshed at 133Mhz then refreshing it at 100Mhz
is no optimal.

Having said that i've never had a problem, and do use 133 on my 100 board.
There was a fellow last year who said he had a perfectly good 133 RAM chip
which he had to move to another system because of random kernel oops. The
RAM worked fine on a mb with a 100Mhz bus, and the kernel oops stopped
after hehad removed the chip.

Goes back to the quality issue again, good RAM probably wont be out of
spec with a 33Mhz refresh difference, whereas cheaper stuff might.

Carl