Advanced facts about Ram-A total guide !

Random access memory or main memory is the memory where all of tasks that we perform takes place, let me guide you so that you can choose ram according to your need and make the best buy and tweak it for more performance.

So the list of things to be noted when you are buying ram are :

1) Its speed and your motherboards compatibility.

2) Your CPU bus speed.

3) Ram type (ddr, ddr2, ddr3…).

4) Dual channel optimization.

5) Overclocking capability, latency and timings .

Ram Speed

Obvious thing is that apart from buffer size (ram size) you should look at the ram speed.
I found Many people are even unaware of this, they just see the size of the ram.
So select the ram with highest speed that your motherboard supports, if your mother board supports up to 800 MHz ram go for 800 MHz ram rather than a 667 MHz ram. But sometimes this theory isn’t ideal as we have to keep one more thing in mind ,obviously “The price” ,If the Price difference between the 1066 MHz ram and 800 MHz ram is much higher than you might have to just think on the fact again as “Is the performance Difference worth the money You will pay ?”.

Bus speed: Dram

What does the cpu bus speed has to do with ram speed, had this question??!!
ok let me explain, It’s a fact that the cpu works much faster when compared to ram, a cpu uses the bus to communicate and load and give instructions to the ram so the ram frequency and the cpu bus frequency should be at least in 1:1 ratio to have a decent synchronization, for e.g. you have a 800 MHz ddr2 ram, this means you have 400 mhz dram(i.e 800/2) and if you have a 800 MHz rated front site bus of an Intel cpu , then ur bus speed will be 800/4 i.e. 200 ,just remember for Intel chipsets bus speed is fsb/4(they are quad boosted) and amd has bus speed=fsb/2.

Anyways now calculate the dram: bus speed ratio and make sure that it is at least in 1:1 ratio or the ram can be higher, in the above case it would be 2:1 which is good since ram is higher.

Here is an example

Dual channel Ram

Now coming to the dual channel concept. Almost all latest mother boards support dual channel, here data flow is done in two lines instead of one so instead of having one 2gb ram stick prefer to have 2X1gb for better performance

DDR vs. DDR2 vs. DDR3

Dram type, like ddr2, ddr3 denote bandwidth and speed, ddr3>ddr2>ddr, so if you want more performance choose a motherboard that supports DDR3 rams

Ram Overclocking

So people who are new to the word overclocking, well it referrs to increasing the performance of the ram to that the factory given through manual tweaking.
So if you are an enthusiast and believe in getting the last drop of juice of performance from your hardware, get yourself a high quality ram like corsair,ocz,g-skill etc ,since no doubt build quality of hardware matters a lot when it comes to Overclocking. To know how to do this keeps reading …..

Increasing FSB

The simplest way is to increase the CPU FSB and with your CPU bus speed the ram frequency raises exponentially. It’s safe up to some extent, but what more can be done?

Ram Latency

Ram latency means the wastage of fsb clocks due to lack of fast response from the ram, lower the latency better it performs, increasing the fsb speed decreases the ram latency. So simply increasing the fsb is an option which i mentioned above but since it isnt much safe to do that let us try another, Let me tell another safer way, it’s “Adjusting the ram timings”.

Adjusting Ram Timings

Adjusting ram timings is another way to increase its performance; RAM timings are measured in CAS, RCD, RP, and RAS. CAS refers to the amount of clock cycles to reach the correct column of memory, RCD refers to the amount of cycles between RAS to CAS, RP refers to the amount of cycles needed to close a row and open the next row for reading, and RAS refers to the smallest number of clock cycles a row must be actively accesses.

For example if RAM timings are 4-4-4-8 ,try lowering cas to 3 and reboot ,if its stable, again try reducing it to 2 and check for stability, keep trying with lower timings until you find it stable.Dont go mad since if the ram can’t handle that you system may not boot.

If you have any doubts feel free to leave a comment.