Couple of questions about ram??

Discussion in 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' started by Jay123, Jan 25, 2011.

  1. Jay123

    Jay123 Geek Trainee

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    Can someone explain to me the difference with ram & its speeds. like why is a 1GB stick
    when it transfers at say 3.2GBps labled as 1gig. What the diffence between the speed
    and the advetized memoroy. why is it not labled as 3.2gig? ex:

    Corsair Memory VS1GB400C3 PC3200 1GB CAS3 -< this is a 1gig stick capable of 3.2GBps.


    also i have a old computer that im useing to play about with, it has this motherboard
    ASUS A8N-E Motherboard - Product details and features - DealTime

    It has a frontside bus of 1000mhz but only support a max ram speed of 400mhz, why is this. i thought the FSB speed was the maximum of the ram speed???
     
  2. Wildcard

    Wildcard Big Geek

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    Hi,

    Ram is what is known as volatile memory. It stores information like a hard drive can, but once the power is turned off, all of that information is gone (which is why it is called volatile). Like a hard drive, RAM has a maximum storage capacity. In the memory you referenced above, 1 stick of ram can hold 1 GB worth of data. The speed PC3200, or one that is running at 400 mhz, is the throughput or how much data can be written or sent out in a clock cycle. As for the difference in FSB and ram speed, the cpu and memory are running on seperate buses but are connected by the northbridge chip. You can read some more about this here Front-side bus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and also here Memory RAM speed - access time, megahertz (MHz), bytes per second
     
  3. HardwareHunter

    HardwareHunter Geek Trainee

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    You could have never explained it any better wildcard. Great info. It can be well understood by the not so techie like me.
     

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