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Rambus question (RIMM)

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NathanAllan

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I have a friend that has an older P4 machine that takes rambus RIMM style memory. I need to upgrade the ram in it (he's running winxp on 128mb ram, and it's slow). The problem was initially that he had been hacked and there were lots of back doors left open. *Without* all the antivirus and spyware stuff on it, it ran fine, but with it I keep getting all kinds of resources not available errors.

Now my main point. The computer takes pc100 speed ram, but all I can find is pc800 speed available. Will the ram match the clock speed of the motherboard? Will those ram chips work? I'm pretty sure that the motherboard controls the speed of ram (general rule that I have gone by). Am I right?

Nathan
 
it sounded weird to me, too, the speed. But I got the info from HP, and usually their info has been good for me so far. The manual states:

"Memory type Rambus (RIMM)"...
"Memory sockets 4 RIMM (168-pin)"...
"Memory speed 66MHz SDRAM of 100MHz SDRAM depending on system"

Not sure what to make of this. Maybe a misprint.

Nathan
 
Its a misprint, RDRAM doesn't go that low. PC800 is the standard base for RDRAM, I have a P4 machine running it myself. Things to note are they MUST be installed in matching pairs and any open slots must have a C-RIMM in it or it will not work. RDRAM is expensive too, to the point its almost not worth it for a personal machine.

Tiger Direct is about the only place I've seen selling it still, and the cheapest one is $109. I'd look into making the jump to something with DDR, it'd be cheaper in the long run.
 
I agree, almost not worth upgrading, but he wants to, cause he doesn't want Vista on a new machine. I'm trying to convince him to go Linux, but he's not willing to learn.

Thanks for the link, I didn't even think of geeks. One question i have, how do they expect to sell a 512mb chip for more than two 256mb chips???

I have c-rimms, the machine has four slots, and two matched chips and two c-rimms. I'll tell him.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Nathan
 
Quite often, the largest module available is significantly more than twice as much as half that capacity. The second-largest is often more than twice as much as half that. Right now, 4 GB is the largest DIMM capacity, and they sell for 4x as much as a 2 GB module. 2 GB modules are pretty darned close to 2x the cost of a 1 GB module.

From what I can find, 1 GB was the largest RIMM made, and you don't even want to know how much those are selling for now...

It's not 'ripping you off', larger capacity modules are generally more difficult to make, and by the time manufacturing technologies catch up to make that size cost-effective, there is a new larger high-end part. (I spent a lot of time in the server world, where ultra-high capacity RAM is very often 'worth' the 4x price premium. If you *NEED* 64 GB of RAM in an Xserve, you *HAVE* to use 4 GB modules. 4 GB modules have 'stacked' memory chips, which has serious quality control issues.)
 
Yes, but, we aren't taking about "leading edge" items. We're talking about 256MB and 512MB, which have been around for years, recovered the R&D costs and THAT'S the difference.

I checked my suppliers for all types of RAM modules and, in every case, a 512MB module costs less than 2 - 256MB modules of the same type and speed.
 
But we're talking about an obsolete form of RAM. Check out PC-100 RAM, and you'll find 512 MB modules (real PC-100 ones - the largest that were 100% PC-100 compatible, not PC-133 ones which often don't work right on PC-100-only systems,) are more than double the cost of 256 MB modules. 64 MB 72-pin SIMMs are often more than double the cost of 32 MB 72-pin SIMMs. 16 MB 30-pin SIMMs are often more than double the cost of 8 MB 72-pin SIMMs.

R&D has been recovered, but for obsolete items, it's pure supply and demand. And the fact that often the highest capacity of a now-obsolete item was made after the move to a newer technology, means that the highest capacity in the older technology was a rare-market item, even when it was new. (512 MB RIMMs were *NOT* common, because by the time 512 MB modules were common, the world had switched firmly to DDR and DDR-2.)
 
A couple of my suppliers still handle both the PC-100 and the PC-133 modules and, again, in every case, the 512MB ones are, at least, 20% LESS than 2 of the 256MB strips.

Granted, they don't handle RIMM, but they are too high volume to deal to things that are low-demand items.

Seems that there are a LOT of places out there that have RAMBus memory and some of them want more for a pair of 256MB strips than I could 4GB of DDR for.

All I'm saying is that they are probably gouging, but, since none of my suppliers carry it, I don't know what my cost price would be.
 
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