what are some important things to look for when buying ram for a computer? there are a lot of things listed. for example, what is latency? why is having low latency good on ram? what is a good amount to look for? also, what is a decent amount of bandwidth to have? can you reccomend some good brands?

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My PC has 768 RAM memory and runs fine...

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Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transered per second.
In memory this is usually meased in frequency, for example 100mzh 133mzh 166mzh or 200mhz, sometimes sold as PC2700 PC3000 etc etc.

higher prequncies are better, but if you buy 200Mzh, but your motherboard can only handle 100Mhz Ram, it will work fine, but you have wasted a little money.

(other way round, motherboard faster than ram may
damage yor ram)

Latency is the Time is takes information to bet from source to destination.

EXAMPLE.. Networking...
Bandwidth is the amount of data i can transfere from England to China per second.
Latency is the time it takes a piece of information from England to China.

In memory however, becase all x86 have the same wordlength, both latency and bandwith are controlled by frequency. (essentially, inversly proportional)

When building a computer, the most important thing to mach is FSB.
getting it wrong may cause faster compnents to have to be underclocked to slow down to the slower components levels.

 

 

 

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Ok thanks, but could you mention some good brands to look for?

i want to build a computer that is good for gaming, with at least 1 gigabyte of ram.

a lot of times the brand can determine the quality

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I use a lot of RAM from Kingston, you will see a lot of people claiming aftermarket RAM is inferior, I don't agree. If you buy matched RAM from Kingston you will pay a lot less than buying OEM, and the OEM will most of the time be inferior..

http://www.kingston.com/

As an example I use RAM for a Cisco router, original 36MB (Yes 36 is correct) cost from Cisco just over $500.00. Same RAM from Kingston, was $24.95 and the partnumbers and chipset are the same. Cisco buys them ffrom Kingston, slap their sticker on top of the Kingston sticker and jack the price up.

Get HyperX or DDR2 if you are starting from scratch.

Nils

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