-
Howdy! Welcome to our community of more than 130.000 members devoted to web hosting. This is a great place to get special offers from web hosts and post your own requests or ads. To start posting sign up here. Cheers! /Peo, FreeWebSpace.net
Equipment ?
- Thread starter pro5ject
- Start date
- Status
Here's a good article I found in my bookmarks about branded vs generic ram..
As I have stated earlier, for generic ram you never know what you're going to be getting and how well it was manufactured.
http://208.190.221.250/archives/00000005.htm
I'm not saying brand name ram like Crucial can be bought with assurance that there are no defects. Everything can have problems, especially computer parts. In fact, I had to RMA a Maxtor hard drive last week. It doesn't mean that Maxtor is bad and evil and that you should avoid them at all costs, it just means I got one that bonked out on me. Any part can become defective. But my overall experience with Maxtor has been very good since I work in a lab where most of our computers use Maxtor. Their support department was very helpful and sent me a replacement within 2 days.
But the fact is that brand name ram undergoes a higher quality of manufacturing. All ram, whether generic or branded, use ram chips from the memory chip manufacturers like Micron, Infineon, Kingston etc... The difference is in the PCB design, and quality of soldering.. So you at least know that you bought high quality ram, and if it doesn't work well, so what.. Just get a replacement since it's warrantied for life.
Aside, if you want really good ram for overclocking, buy high perfomance ram. These are usually rated from PC150 to PC170. They use the same chips from the big manufacturers, but use a select batch of chips that are able to reach higher clock speeds.. These brands include Apacer (infineon), Kingmax, Mushkin, Crucial, Corsair among a few.
As I have stated earlier, for generic ram you never know what you're going to be getting and how well it was manufactured.
http://208.190.221.250/archives/00000005.htm
I'm not saying brand name ram like Crucial can be bought with assurance that there are no defects. Everything can have problems, especially computer parts. In fact, I had to RMA a Maxtor hard drive last week. It doesn't mean that Maxtor is bad and evil and that you should avoid them at all costs, it just means I got one that bonked out on me. Any part can become defective. But my overall experience with Maxtor has been very good since I work in a lab where most of our computers use Maxtor. Their support department was very helpful and sent me a replacement within 2 days.
But the fact is that brand name ram undergoes a higher quality of manufacturing. All ram, whether generic or branded, use ram chips from the memory chip manufacturers like Micron, Infineon, Kingston etc... The difference is in the PCB design, and quality of soldering.. So you at least know that you bought high quality ram, and if it doesn't work well, so what.. Just get a replacement since it's warrantied for life.
Aside, if you want really good ram for overclocking, buy high perfomance ram. These are usually rated from PC150 to PC170. They use the same chips from the big manufacturers, but use a select batch of chips that are able to reach higher clock speeds.. These brands include Apacer (infineon), Kingmax, Mushkin, Crucial, Corsair among a few.
Last edited:
The Hard Drive is the bottleneck, you have a slow 12MS Hard drive then you won't experience the same speed as a 8MS Hard Drive, obviously. If you skimp on the hard drive and get 1GB of ram and someone else get's a fast hard drive and 256MB of Ram, the someone who has the faster hard drive is better off. The Hard Drive deals with the average access time, so all aspects of performance.
What you are basically saying is that you should focus in on the bottleneck of the system. That of course is the part that slows everything else down and you are correct. However, you need to find where the performance problem is and usually it’s the ram that is the bottleneck.
The ram is direct so it doesn't have to go through the hard drive for everything. It is faster because of this.
If you can run your applications from the ram and just save the changed files that you need to keep on the hard drive you'll be fine. If you get low on ram and you have to use "virtual memory" where your hard drive acts as swap space you'll see how much it slows you down. I don't care if your hard drive is SCSI and at 15,000 RPM if you have to use your hard drive for swap space you'll notice is slow down. Before the server move FreeWebspace had less ram and trust me you could notice it when you viewed pages and when you logged in and looked at its usage it was dieing for more. My point is that you can't overlook the ram as it's one of the most crucial aspects of your computer.
The hard drive is important of course but you can't overlook the ram and most computer professionals will tell you the first upgrade to your system should probably be the ram if things are feeling sluggish.
The ram is direct so it doesn't have to go through the hard drive for everything. It is faster because of this.
If you can run your applications from the ram and just save the changed files that you need to keep on the hard drive you'll be fine. If you get low on ram and you have to use "virtual memory" where your hard drive acts as swap space you'll see how much it slows you down. I don't care if your hard drive is SCSI and at 15,000 RPM if you have to use your hard drive for swap space you'll notice is slow down. Before the server move FreeWebspace had less ram and trust me you could notice it when you viewed pages and when you logged in and looked at its usage it was dieing for more. My point is that you can't overlook the ram as it's one of the most crucial aspects of your computer.
The hard drive is important of course but you can't overlook the ram and most computer professionals will tell you the first upgrade to your system should probably be the ram if things are feeling sluggish.
That is incorrect, my computer which has a 20GB Hard Drive and 384MB of PC133 RAM, is quite a bit faster than my dads which has 512MB ram. It has to do mainly with the hard drive. If you have slow hard drive in terms of milliaseconds then you are pretty much screwed. The RAM does crap to help this, and based on my experience this is the way it is. The hard drive is responsible for the bottleneck, not the ram or cpu, period. You can ask anyone this, who has a slow hard drive and a lot of ram because that is just the way it is.
Most people and professionals will tell you that the hard drive might be upgraded if your computer is slow, not the ram.
Most people and professionals will tell you that the hard drive might be upgraded if your computer is slow, not the ram.
Last edited:
It all depends on what your applications are using. If you have ever created a ram drive where your ram acts like a virtual hard drive you would know that ram is so much faster then a hard drive it would blow it out of the water.
The only way your theory is correct is only if your applications are using the hard drive more intensively then your ram. The hard drive is important don't get me wrong but if you only have 64 MB of ram you should upgrade the ram before a hard drive any day.
Again it goes back to utilization, if your running it all from a slower hard drive and not from the ram of course it'll be slow its because it's using the slow hard drive. If it runs it from the ram then it would be faster. Ideally you'd have fast ram and a fast hard drive but in terms of upgrades the ram is much more logical in most cases.
The only way your theory is correct is only if your applications are using the hard drive more intensively then your ram. The hard drive is important don't get me wrong but if you only have 64 MB of ram you should upgrade the ram before a hard drive any day.
Again it goes back to utilization, if your running it all from a slower hard drive and not from the ram of course it'll be slow its because it's using the slow hard drive. If it runs it from the ram then it would be faster. Ideally you'd have fast ram and a fast hard drive but in terms of upgrades the ram is much more logical in most cases.
OMG, you are so misled. This is a very basic lesson: All of your programs are on the hard drive, to access them you need to use the hard drive. The speed of that mainly depends on the RPM and Random Access Time.
This Setup here would do fine for any applications today:
64MB OF PC133
10GB UDMA/100 8.2MS 7200RPM
While this wouldn't:
192MB OF PC133
10GB UDMA/33 13MS 5400RPM
This Setup here would do fine for any applications today:
64MB OF PC133
10GB UDMA/100 8.2MS 7200RPM
While this wouldn't:
192MB OF PC133
10GB UDMA/33 13MS 5400RPM
Giancarlo, it again goes back to my last post about disk utilization. Upon boot up things load from the hard drive so it is important there but if you then use your ram for the application it would be much faster then if you used a hard drive.
Search the internet for making a ram drive and you'll see exactly what I mean. The bottom line is that the ram is the faster component and has a purpose. The hard drives purpose is for storage and once you load an application it should utilize the ram and not the swap space on your hard drive. If it has to use your hard drive for swap space it will be much slower then the ram.
I don't see how you can deny that the ram is faster? The hard drive is important but mainly for loading the application and seek times are important as well but once its loaded and it runs from the ram you are fine. Of course you have constant reads/writes from the hard drive but for the most part if you are in Photoshop for example the ram is the crucial aspect. Gaming again would point to the ram (and of course video card).
I don't even know what I'm trying to debate with you. You agree the ram is faster but think the hard drive is more important? Run your system on 8 mb of ram and set the hard drive to be used for virtual memory in windows or more correctly swap space.
It all goes back to utilization.
Search the internet for making a ram drive and you'll see exactly what I mean. The bottom line is that the ram is the faster component and has a purpose. The hard drives purpose is for storage and once you load an application it should utilize the ram and not the swap space on your hard drive. If it has to use your hard drive for swap space it will be much slower then the ram.
I don't see how you can deny that the ram is faster? The hard drive is important but mainly for loading the application and seek times are important as well but once its loaded and it runs from the ram you are fine. Of course you have constant reads/writes from the hard drive but for the most part if you are in Photoshop for example the ram is the crucial aspect. Gaming again would point to the ram (and of course video card).
I don't even know what I'm trying to debate with you. You agree the ram is faster but think the hard drive is more important? Run your system on 8 mb of ram and set the hard drive to be used for virtual memory in windows or more correctly swap space.
It all goes back to utilization.
I never argued that the hard drive was faster, but it is the bottleneck for everything the ram isn't based on articles I have read in the past. The Hard Drive is bloody important, and more important then the ram, if you have a 5400 RPM hard drive and tons of ram you won't get anywhere, if you have a 10,000RPM Hard drive and 96MB of Ram you will get somewhere.
My opinion is this: The bottleneck is in the hard drive, mainly.
My opinion is this: The bottleneck is in the hard drive, mainly.
Of course the hard drive is important but I suggest you read up on the ram and how to optimize it. It sounds like your using the hard drive more then you are the ram on the system that has the slower hard drive but more ram.
Good read:
http://thetechzone.com/articles/ram_drive/index.htm
There are many more if you use the search engine. Why rely on the hard drive for everything when you can completely bypass it and speed it up with the ram?
Keep the hard drive as a storage device so it stores the data that would be lost on the ram when it looses power. Don't make your hard drive act like ram when you could let the ram do its job to speed things up.
Good read:
http://thetechzone.com/articles/ram_drive/index.htm
There are many more if you use the search engine. Why rely on the hard drive for everything when you can completely bypass it and speed it up with the ram?
Keep the hard drive as a storage device so it stores the data that would be lost on the ram when it looses power. Don't make your hard drive act like ram when you could let the ram do its job to speed things up.
the CPU and ram are the most important for when it comes to performance.. it's not to say that the hard drive doesn't play a role at all, it is very important for disk intensive tasks.. but for computationally intensive tasks, what really matters is a) the cpu speed, b) the size of the L1 and L2 caches, c) ram and speed of the ram.. The system bus speed is also a very important underlying factor, but it usually takes time for cpu manufacturers to up this aspect of a system..
this is probably going to take a lot of explaining, but I don't have any time tonight to write this out... maybe if someone else doesn't explain, later I'll explain how CPU's, the system bus, the memory, and the north and south bridge of a motherboard works. but it's getting really tiresome now..
this is probably going to take a lot of explaining, but I don't have any time tonight to write this out... maybe if someone else doesn't explain, later I'll explain how CPU's, the system bus, the memory, and the north and south bridge of a motherboard works. but it's getting really tiresome now..
Last edited:
Even with that said it's still true that the hard drive would be the bottle neck mainly because it's the equipment that needs to load the data in to the memory. If it's incredibly outdated of course it will slow down your system but in Giancarlo's scenario where the slower computer was faster because of the hard drive it most likely wasn't utilizing the ram and that was my only point.
The seek time and RPM's are very important for a hard drive but it shouldn't have to be utilized for much more then storage. If your computer is always on and it's stable load it up with ram and create a nice sized ram drive and you'll love it.
The seek time and RPM's are very important for a hard drive but it shouldn't have to be utilized for much more then storage. If your computer is always on and it's stable load it up with ram and create a nice sized ram drive and you'll love it.
i think the way we are describing performance is very vague.. performance can be referred to many aspects and to many different tasks. different bottlenecks will exist for different tasks..
ie. compiling or calculations (cpu, mem are bottlenecks), 3d games (cpu, video card are bottlenecks), database (cpu, hard drive are bottle necks)..
in reality, everything is connected to the system bus.. the system bus is the true overall bottleneck since it is usually the slowest.. right now we have gighertz cpus running on bus speeds of 100mhz and 133mhz.. intel and amd see this. this is why intel implemented a 400mhz bus in the pentium 4. but it's still going to be a long time till we see them speed of this aspect of the system, while cpus are scaling from 2 gighertz and beyond...
it can be argued from many different scenarios, but each scenario is different.
ie. compiling or calculations (cpu, mem are bottlenecks), 3d games (cpu, video card are bottlenecks), database (cpu, hard drive are bottle necks)..
in reality, everything is connected to the system bus.. the system bus is the true overall bottleneck since it is usually the slowest.. right now we have gighertz cpus running on bus speeds of 100mhz and 133mhz.. intel and amd see this. this is why intel implemented a 400mhz bus in the pentium 4. but it's still going to be a long time till we see them speed of this aspect of the system, while cpus are scaling from 2 gighertz and beyond...
it can be argued from many different scenarios, but each scenario is different.
Originally posted by Todd
Rather then explain it Stu link to it:
http://www.makeitsimple.com/articles/ramguide/
heh.. yeah.. that helps explain the memory part.. but there are other things that need to be explained, like how cpu effects performance (i'd hate to go down into instruction set architectures cuz there are so many limitations there), as well as the and north and south bridge...
- Status
