Memory... Opinions on various brands...

[CLTEK]

Hey kids!

Long time no talk. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

I'm curious to know what you guys think of Kingston memory. Since I've started doing upgrades and stuff for friends, I've been wondering about other memory manufacturers. I haven't used anything but Micron/Crucial stuff. But a friend of mine asked me about the quality of the Kingston stuff. I have no idea. I looked around at the site the information that is presented is just as impressive as any other site.

Just some thoughts...

Seems to me, as long as it's a name brand company and you aren't gonna do any OC'ing, you would be just fine. Personally, I wouldn't buy any generic stuff. However, I would purchase some of the 'value' RAM. Seems to me that companies like Mushkin and the like charge a bit too much for the average user. Besides... RAM is so inexpensive these days, it's worth the couple of extra dollars to get better stuff.

Your thoughts?

Respectfully, Cory

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Age and Treachery will forever triumph over Youth and Skill.

[kenja]

Kingston ValueRAM has been good enough for me. I've got about a half dozen of their PC100 and PC133 DIMMs. The ICs themselves carry the logos of Fairchild, Samsung, Hyundai, Winbond, Infineon, etc.

I recently bought a couple 256MB DIMMs of Spectek. A subsidiary of Micron, these supposedly use the same dies.

Note that if you have a fussy motherboard (like my KT133 chipset Soyo), I'd recommend buying all the memory for it at the same time. The pair of Specteks work great, but I had troubles getting dissimilar DIMMs to cooperate. (No problem for my other socket A motherboard, an Abit KT7.)

[This message has been edited by kenja (edited 08-24-2001).]

[iisbob]

i've used Kingston several times in the past on associates systems ( and in some of my own ) and have found them to be just a trusty as Crucial.

The only crappy RAM i've encountered lately is " noname " brands being sold at Computer fairs for ridculously low prices ( 128mb PC133 for $6.99 ), thought i'd try them out-evey time so far they've crapped out under normal usage, not just OC'ing.

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iisbob
"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." --Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

[AwARe]

My limited experience with kingston, is 1 stick.....still running after over a year, and never a problem.....system very stable, limited crashes, very little (if any) data errors........

Heard good things from other people.....

Would probably buy again if price was right......

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Read the information. If you have problems understanding the information, read it again. Repeat until enlightenment is achieved.

[ranchdog]

CLTEK.... Kingston gets my $$ and gives me good results. Used Kingston by choice for over a year and haven't had to ask for a replacement for any of it. It even gets along with picky Asus Motherboards. Luck.

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......Indecision may or may not be my problem......
...... Kickin' A Rock....

[Dan Mitchell]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by kenja:

Note that if you have a fussy motherboard (like my KT133 chipset Soyo), I'd recommend buying all the memory for it at the same time. The pair of Specteks work great, but I had troubles getting dissimilar DIMMs to cooperate. (No problem for my other socket A motherboard, an Abit KT7.)

I recently added a 256m stick from Crucial to the 128m in my new gateway (Microstar MS 6330 mobo with VIA KT133 chipset). As far as I can tell, the new memory's working fine with the original dimm. No indications of any difficulty. How might a memory problem (like the incompatability you mentioned) show up? How can you tell if all is well with ram, other than going to system/performance & checking that the ram quantity listed matches what is installed? Is there a utility which can check through system ram, sort of like scandisk, to check for problems?

Dan

[kenja]

I used Sisoft's Sandra 2001 (freeware for personal use (http://www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra/)) program. This helped me in two ways when figuring out new memory on a new motherboard:

1.)Using the "Mainboard Information" module showed me the effects on SDRAM timing a BIOS setting such as "Turbo" or "SPD" (Serial Presence Detect) would have. It also showed my Abit KT7 DIMM order as being designed opposite from "convention"; DIMM 1 is furthest from the processor. (This is in the manual, but I missed it; didn't matter for my setup.)

2.)To determine the reliability of a memory configuration, I used the "Burn in Wizard", with only "Memory" selected in Options. If the benchmark ran continuously for a hundred cycles or so with no freeze-ups, the configuration has proven to be stable in daily operation.

By "freeze-up", I mean the video image froze, and no keyboard input nor mouse movement had any effect. If the monitor had gone into standby mode, it could not be "awakened".

Now that I think of it, there is a third use for Sandra: the Memory benchmark (not in "burn in" mode) often showed a performance decrease when I installed a third DIMM. Not that I'd have ever noticed the difference, but it lessened my opinion of the Soyo SY-K7VTA-B (the KT7 showed no such behavior).

Sandra doesn't involve every bit of your memory, but it seems to use large enough chunks for troubleshooting. Qualitas RAMexam is a $24 program that Ghost_Hacker links to in this thread (http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/Forum15/HTML/000511.html).


[This message has been edited by kenja (edited 08-25-2001).]