CL2 or 3?

[Fish]

I'm thinking with the low memory prices of buying a 128 stick to my already 128 I have now. I have a Dell 4100 P3 866. Sisoft Sandra scan came up with this:
CL3 up to 133MHz- CL2 up to 100MHz.
What does this mean I have? I have 133MHz FSB,so does this mean I have CL3? Or if you can tell me how to find out,I will look it up myself. Not a lot of info comes with OEM. http://cwm.ragesofsanity.com/s/net4/jump.gif
After reading further I see this is the wrong conference. Sorry.

After going to crucial.com, I see that it answers my question for me. 133 is CL3. I was confused why the CL3 would be used in the faster motherboards instead of the faster CL2. But what's 1 clock cycle going to matter.

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If you ever get to thinkin' you're a person of influence,
try orderin' somebody elses dog around.


[This message has been edited by Fish (edited 03-18-2001).]

[kenja]

Glad to see someone that figures things out for themselves, Fish! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif It may help to clarify your understanding by looking at the listing of Crucial's offerings by memory type.

On the Crucial homepage, click on "search by memory type or by a Crucial part number". From the pull-down "Select memory component by type" menu, choose "168-pin DIMM". Here you can see that for a few bucks more than CL3, you can usually get PC133 CL2 modules.

[Fish]

Thanks Kenja,
But, if I have CL3 now and bought CL2, it is my understanding that it would run at the slower CAS3. Am I correct in thinking that?


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If you ever get to thinkin' you're a person of influence,
try orderin' somebody elses dog around.

[This message has been edited by Fish (edited 03-18-2001).]

[kenja]

Good point. You'd never notice the difference, anyway. (But there is a difference: When I set my Soyo motherboard BIOS to run the memory at CL2, the machine won't get through the POST (Power On Self Test) if there is a CL3 DIMM installed.)

The reason a motherboard will automatically adjust to the slowest memory: SPD (Serial Presence Detect). This is a small rectangular eight-lead PROM (Programmable Read-Only Memory) chip (found on most DIMMs) that contains the memory's operating parameters.

There is some more background information in The PC Guide (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/ram/timing.htm).

[Fish]

Thanks again Kenja,
If there's one gripe I have about this site, it's all the info they have on here. I can't stop reading it long enough to go anywhere else!
Thanks for the tutorial on memory. Seems like the more I learn, I find I don't actually know as much as I thought.

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If you ever get to thinkin' you're a person of influence,
try orderin' somebody elses dog around.

[This message has been edited by Fish (edited 03-18-2001).]

[Paleo Pete]

lol...I gave up thinking I knew a lot loooong ago...I find out just how little I know every day. So I keep trying to learn the rest. It'll never happen, there'll always be more.

The PC Guide's article on Ststem Memory (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/ram/index.htm) might be useful reading too.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[sleddog]

I'd set it all to 133MHz, CL2 (CAS 2), boot 'er up and see if it flies http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif I'd place a small wager on it all working just fine. This is, of course, overclocking your memory. If it doesn't like it you'll get error at boot or when Windows is loading, in which case set it all to CL3. Either way, the only difference is in the benchmarks http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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sleddog
[sleddog.f2s.com] (http://www.sleddog.f2s.com)