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Create Your Own Psuedo-RDRAM
ucsimon writes: "For those of you who like to overclock, this is truly some hardcore stuff that shows how to convert SDRAM to RDRam. I value my ram too much to try, but I wonder if anyone out there has tried this yet. " Having the same sentimental attachment to my RAM that most people do, I haven't even attempted this either - anyone know if this works, even in theory? Post below. [Updated 28th April by timothy:] Well, this won't actually convert your SDRAM to RDRAM of course, but it will add to your heat-slurping overclocking abilities.
The idea of overclocking is pretty stupid really. I mean how many other expensive pieces of electronic equipement do you buy and then pump more current through? None, that's how many. So why do people feel the need to push their CPUs beyond their design parameters, risking data loss and burn out for a few MHz they'll never notice anyway.
Personally I think it's all a bit juvenile, sort of like the "my car's better than your car" mentality prevalent amongst boy racers. It's all just basically a penis substitute, and I think that those that feel the need to brag about it need to grow up and realise it's not all about size (or speed in this case).
Time is only money if you have a job. For those of us that are jobless, you have to hack with what you have :)
The only reference to RDRAM is in it because it's shielding not only acts as a cooling element, but also shields the signal lines from unwanted RF. The article then goes on to explain how to create an RF shield for your SDRAMs.
This might be crucial if you get into the 150MHz range, where there could be a lot of RF signals nearby. Example: Ham radio stations operate in the 144-148MHz range, and your next door neighbour could be one of them. How would you like your system to crash each time he hits the mike??
In the Good Ole U S of A......
:) Elsewhere I go with the flow of traffic.
The federal gov't wanted to institute a national speed limit in response to a percieved shortage of petroleum. Nowhere in the constitution are they given that power, but the supreme court allows them to blackmail the states into passing uniform codes (this should be of interest to all hackers, the shrink-wrap liscense laws are going to be implemented this way!). And so, conformance with the national speed limit was tied to block-grants of federal monies to state highway maintainance funds.
The speed limit was 55mph for as far back as I can remember (hence, Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55"). American nature being what it is, most people felt it safe to go a bit faster, but with increased speed comes increased fines if caught. In some cases, the fine could DOUBLE if the driver went 15mph over the limit.
Thus, a lot of people feel that 70 is the safest practical speed for an automobile on american highways.
The current situation has changed. The blackmail laws are gone and some of the western states have completely repealed their speed limits (for highways, at least). Montana, iirc, is one of these.
For myself, my top speed is 110, and I only do that on this one section of road that I know is safe and I never see any cops.
--Threed
The Slashdot Sig Virus was foiled before it could spread.
Are you using Netscape 4.0+? If so... Go to View->Page Source Highlight link hit Control(Or Apple, if yer on a Mac)-C Hit Alt(or Apple, if yer on a Mac)-L Hit Control(or...ah, you get the picture)-V Hit Enter It took you longer to post the comment "Yes, but one that has a life." than it did for me to get the proper URL. How did I know this? Am I some geek with nothing better to do? Nope...aside from the view->Page source bit, this is pretty standard cut-and-paste procedure. Ugh. BTW, you're right, URLs should be checked...but it's easy enough to get past this.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Sorry, forgot to pick HTML mode: http://www.u-oplaz.com/oc/RAM_shield.htm
This article has NOTHING to do with turning SDRAM into RDRAM.. All they did was put a copper shield on a stick of SDRAM, making it look similar to a real RDRAM module.
Doesn't Slashdot occasionally GLANCE at the links that are submitted before posting them?
The author comments that 150 MHz is a "trouble region" because there's "more" EMI at that frequency. Bullshit. EMI just has to be present to be a problem, not at a particular frequency. 150MHz is only a problem because the RAM is designed for 133MHz.
Can't have one without the other. That is to say a changing electric field produces a changing magnetic field and vice versa. A faraday cage stops electric fields so it stops high frequency magnetic fields. (The fields will pass through on the order of a few wavelengths, so having the shield so close to the chip is not going to do much for you.)
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
A while back I bought some PC100 ECC SDRAM from eBay and it showed up with a metal shield similar in appearance to the one this article suggests installing. Of course, it was aluminum instead of copper and appeared to have been soldered onto the dimm at the factory. I think the dimm was OEM'd for Compaq or Dell.
A truly intelligent post made by someone who OBVIOUSLY finished H.S. in the deep south. All you racist bastards are about being anonymous ( KKK AC )...wonder why that is? So you don't have to face the same ridicule from the people you constantly bad mouth?
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Don't people have anything better to do than post crap about the people posting crap about slashdot moderation?
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Two things limit the maximum clock speed of a digital device: power dissipation and timing constraints.
Typically, one limit will mask another. In the case of PC-class CPUs, it is generally power dissipation that limits the top speed (as most people realise, power dissipation is directly proportional to clock speed) which is why all these weird and wonderful cooling devices make overclocking possible.
Eventually, you'll reach the second limit -- timing constraints. Timing constraints reflect the time taken for electrons to flow along a conductor and charge the capacitive loads they are connected to. They vary only a few percent with temperature, so no practical amount of cooling can overcome this limit.
I have no idea which of these RAMs are limited by. My gut feeling is that they are limited by timing constraints rather than power dissipation (for various reasons, the main one being that RAMs don't really get hot.) Anyone know for certain?
Now that the link has been fixed on the Slashdot main page, all of these posts are irrelevant and "redundant". Shouldn't they all be modded down to -2 to spare everyone browsing from seeing them? After all, if you're going to punish people karma-wise for not forseeing that someone else would post the same thing a few seconds sooner, shouldn't anybody not forseeing that Slashdot would fix the link also have their karma stomped on?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
<A HREF="
in front of the URL and
">
after it, but when you follow that with the text that you want to be the underlined clickable part, you aren't following *that* with
</A>
so that everything that follows is treated as part of what you wanted to be the underlined, clickable part.
Oh, one other thing. Apparently Slashdot doesn't like it if the A or the HREF or the other letters, like P, or I, or BR in between the less than and greater than signs are not uppercase.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The reason I wrote out the above instead of ampersand el tee and such is that *sometimes* Slashdot will show everything looking right in preview, but change your actual text where you use the ampersand to give the appearance of HTML *into* HTML, so that when you actually submit it comes out looking like a real link.
The best time to avoid looking like an idiot in a post is when discussing imperfections in someone else's post.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
that vw bug idea is the best one i have heard in here. shite. actually the idea of the box is great too... if the dimm slots are near the processor you could even ground the box right to the processor heat sink's EMI pads. or you could make the box out of copper mesh, or even chicken wire. of course this would only benefit you if you were running the mem at 150 MHz or above...
thanx
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
eeek , fix the url! :)
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
Exactly. It was posted one minute before. Altho it almost definitely hadn't shown up yet on this person's page, it was already posted. Therefore it's redundant. Lots of people surf /. at +1 or +2. They have no use for multiple links to the same thing, and for that matter, how many of the rest of us need multiple links to the same page? I didn't think so.
I don't think so. The article goes on to talk about overclocking the bus to take advantage of the EMI shield, but the person who did the conversion didn't have fast enough hardware to allow it. But the obvious point was to make the RAM faster than SDRAM is sposed to go, which would mean making it ACT (not be == to) like RDRAM.
"Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) is a frequency modulation technique for EMI reduction. In the latest motherboards, the master clock generator chip does not maintain a constant frequency."
As far as I know, what SSC does is jiggle the clock frequency a little, thus spreading EMI emissions out across a slightly wider range of frequencies. In other words, it gets around FCC EMI regulations without actually reducing the amount of energy radiated.
The metal plate in Rambus isn't just an EMF shield--it also functions as a heat sink, as not only do RDRAM modules run hot, the heat production is concentrated in a very small area. I'm guessing that any speed increase the mad overclockers saw in their SDRAM was due more to improved heat dissipation than anything else.
"I'm not just an elder god, I'm cute too!"
See Rambus's RIMM design guide, section 8.2.1 "Mechanical Components - Heatspreader/Cover Reference Design". More info can be found on Intel's developer site, on the RIMM Module Reference Design page, under the section "Production Heat Spreader Reference Design".
Basically, RDRAM RIMMs give off a lot of heat, plus the heat is produced in a very small area. The aluminum covers are necessary to prevent hot spots. If you look at the figure 8-1 "Double-Sided RIMM Module Assembly-Exploded View", you'll see that the reference design calls for a thermal pad (Or thermal grease) between the heat spreader and the RDRAM chips.
Anyway, I went to google for some links.
Here is a fairly general overview of EMI in computers. It talks about various strategies for dealing with it.
Here is an article mostly about SDRAM, but which says the following: "Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) is a frequency modulation technique for EMI reduction. In the latest motherboards, the master clock generator chip does not maintain a constant frequency." Anyone know if that is true? I didn't know that...
Finally, an article showing Intel is concerned about the problems of EMI in modern computers.
All in all, interesting stuff (I love absurb overclocking articles!) but I would like to have found some evidence that shielding memory like they did has any real benefit.
Slashdot is really getting low on standards... It seems to me that whoever accepted this submission didn't even read the page. Uncool, I say.
-- Fast, Cheap, Well. Pick two.
The article is about making your overclocked memory more stable by shielding it. Not about changing the type as such ...
// Jens M Andreasen
Looks like it could work.
mvh
send + more == money?
This comes in really handy as I just converted my 16MHz i386 to 1.5GHz Willamette, which as we all know doesn't support SDRAM for now. Now if could just convert that 5.25" floppy drive to a DVD-RAM drive...
The article doesn't go into converting SDRAM into RDRAM at all. It's about making an EMI shielding for your SDRAM chips. This doesn't make the SDRAM into RDRAM although it make look like it. It's sort of like taking a saturn and putting a porsche body on top of it and expecting it to perform like a porsche.
RDRAM uses a 8 or 16 bit channel running at 300 to 400+ MHz with data being sent on the rising and falling edges of the clock. SDRAM runs at 100MHz on a 32bit bus that sends data on the rising edge only. Turning SDRAM into RDRAM would involve replacing the memory interface and control circuits on the SDRAM and changing the packing to fit in a RIMM. If you can do this, you'll probably do better to work as a chip designer for a semiconductor company and using the money you earn to buy some RDRAM.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
I know a few of these points have been brought up already, but let me summarize and add my own thoughts:
:)
1) The metal bracket on RIMMS isn't for EMI shielding, it's for heat. It's just like the heatsink on your CPU, which doesn't add to the EMI protection noticably.
2) A 150MHz SDRAM dimm isn't RDRAM. Rambus uses an entirely different protocol, and anyway... 150Mhz SDRAM is probably faster than rambus.
3) Your SDRAM won't work at 150MHz because it's simply too fast for the junctions to switch, not because of EMI. If you've got a serious EMI problem, you'll probably see it if you're overclocking or not.
4) That design shown probably wouldn't fix an EMI problem, either. It'll most likely act as an antenna, worsening the problem.
BUT... To whoever made that page.. Keep hacking. While this idea might not have worked, you may come up with a great supercooled DIMM refrigerator or something. Good luck.
I have had the same thing happen to me but with my home AV system. At any time of the day, in the space of a few seconds, a male voice, sounding like a CB transmission, will come through the speakers gradually becoming clear enough to make out a few words, then fade away. It's usually the same voice and even though it's VERY LOUD (almost painful) I can't make out the meaning of the message [I'm guessing aircraft tower]. I have medium grade, off-the-shelf stuff; large screen TV, tuner, VCR, CD, bunny ears and Sony satelite dish. The system is always on when I hear the voices -- but then, it's always on when I'm home -- the speaker cables are medium gage Monster Cables and the system is on a wire rack. I don't have a computer at home and the computer at work never expresses similar symptoms. I'm in Grand Rapids, MI, USA if that's a viable variable. Others have heard it in my house, but I haven't heard of this occurance from my friends with similar systems. I called DirecTV and they had no answers to explain this. Anyone know what's causing this or who I should ask?
Muchas gracias.
Dirt doesn't need luck.
Likewise, the Soyo SY-6VBA 133 allows it, as well. Up to 155, actually. It also allows you to run your RAM slower than the rest of the system bus. As in, I've got a PIII 450 running at 600 on the 133fsb, but my ram is only at 100. So if I had a nasty-ass coppermine, I'd be able to punch it up to 155 and keep my ram at a gentle ~116.5Mhz The AGP and PCI are another story, tho. Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Despite the obvious flaws with this story it actually has an interresting point. How many system errors are caused by EM interference? At the apartment I just moved out of someone nearby was broadcasting so strongly that sound would come out of my computer speakers even with the power turned off. Freaked me out the first time I heard it. Apparently the EM boradcast was inducing/oscillating current to the speaker or the power line going into the speaker. The computer alwas seemed more stable late at night and most-unstable from 4-11PM. Maybe a good solution would for someone to sell some inexpensive tape made from braided wire that could be applied to sensitive components. Also, does this also mean that Apple computers may be less stable since they have plactic cases? Interresting.
Er... it appears that this page is about sheilding your SDRam. Is that all there to it?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I thought it was "colour the outside edge with a green marker" or "cool cd in freezer"?
:)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is moderated as Redundent and reduced down 1. Another post with the same information, now up to 3, was posted just 1 minute before.
Don't moderators have anything better to do with their points rather than moderate down people who are trying to help?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
The new Abit(every OC'er's favorite company) VT6X4 has a FSB of 150 mhz (1/4 PCI bus speed).
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
"So why do people feel the need to push their CPUs beyond their design parameters, risking data loss and burn out for a few MHz they'll never notice anyway."
What design parameters are you talking about? You're under the wrong impression if you believe a PIII 600 is a different chip than a PIII 850. They are, in fact the same chip, it's just that the 850 has probably passed more of Intel's QA. The argument for overclocking is that they're willing to bet Intel's standards are too strict (Intel does have to guarantee they chip will run at least at the advertised speed), and with proper cooling or whatever voodoo waving they do they can get their chip to run faster. And it is, in fact, a bet; overclockers void their warranty doing so.
While you may think this sort of thing is for kids, another argument has more merit - they money they save from buying a higher-rated chip can be used to buy a newer chip a year two down the line when it's time to upgrade (supposing their overclocked chip life's shorter). Naturally, I suppose they'll overclock those chips as well.
http://www.talknerdy.org
FFS, i've seen some bullshit on Slashdot, but this takes the cake.
'Turn your SD-RAM into RD-RAM??'
I used to respect slashdot, most everything on it was both interesting and factual.
Lately, its just infantile ranting and, in this case, lies.
Screw you, Hemos
-ikekrull.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
"The best material to shielding EMI is to use copper coated iron sheet"
What is the guy on?
If he is trying to create a kind of Faraday cage then choose good conductors like Oxygen Free High Conductivity (OFHC) Copper. Even better use some superconducting material if you really feel like pushing the boat out.
Agreed...read the TITLE tag...
(Post delayed a week due to off-topic-ness)
First, the putz you responded to is a loser who lacks the skill to initiate a proper troll, and thus resorted to writing an off-color testament to his own lack of creativity. You fed him anyway. Bad smkndrkn!
Anyway most of the serious racists in this country are in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Midwest, where minorities *really are* a minority. Seattle is the worst city for minorities in the country, according to the NAACP (you can find the study somewhere in their vast labyrinthine web page, if you really want to). After Seattle comes Portland, Or., and third is Indianapolis, IN. It also really sucks to be Asian in Detroit. You're right about the KKK though; they are a bunch of ac's who should be moderated down immediately. With shotguns.
The probable reason that you think that the South is so bad is because of incredibly dishonest journalism and a few random outbreaks of stupidity perpetrated by isolated individuals (think alabama churches, s. carolina confederate flag, etc.) I used to think the same thing, until I moved to Nashville and actually saw what people are like here; my minority friends all have a deep-seated hatred for the south, and I think it is mostly unwarranted. There are stupid people here, like anywhere else in this country, and a lot of them drive pickup trucks, but violent crime committed with racist intent is relatively low as far as I have seen or heard. IMHO hating southerners because they are from the south is just as bigoted as hating a minority because of his race or creed. Hate any individual racist bastard you want to- mock him for his bigotry and for his obvious lack of education and pity him for his low self esteem - but don't lump them into a group with all of their neighbors, because most people just want to live their lives in peace.
I basically lost my (thai) fiance due to a similar prejudice; she refused to move here from denver because she was afraid of rednecks. So I am quite bitter about this particular kind of misconception. If this is a response to a second order troll, keep that in mind as you gloat...
Rev Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
I think not ... it shows how to add a foil EMI shield to SDRAM so it LOOKS like RDRAM ....
Damnit Jim, I'm a Doctor not a Taiwanese factory worker!
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
I'm only into overclocking if it makes my system FASTER...
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
The web page in question tells you how to bend some copper and attach it to your SDRAM so that yes, it looks a little bit like an RDRAM if you squint a bit and the light is not so good.
Forget the RDRAM .vs. SDRAM debates. This is a non-story. It just doesn't deliver, even if you did want to do the conversion.
Is there anyway to down-moderate the base article off the front page?
RAMBUS RAM also is not direct access, it uses a protocol based communication (as said on tomshardware) that works serially between RDRAM modules. This is why there is such a huge "adaptor" for i820 and i840 motherboards to enable them to use DRAM. To make DRAM in RDRAM, all components nessesairy to receive, interpreate, and act on the protocol commands would need to be added
Besides, I think if butting copper around a PC133 DIMM was all it'd took, Intel would have come up with something easier that the bus translation adaptor thing for DRAM in their chipsets.
--It's amazing what they can do with copper these days
- Sig
Yeah, I usally hit the /. "preview" then hit the "back" button instead of resubmitting from the preview.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
So we are all geeks, right? I end my computer modifications when the soldering iron, tin snips, or a multitester comes out.. call me a coward, but id like the thing to turn on later.
A friend of mine replaced his bios battery with a commerical one from a store.. personally, i was a tad afriad. It worked.. kinda
Whats the moral of the story? Im glad that someone has figured out how to do all of these neat things.. however, im also glad its not me.
--jay
Not quite entirely true.
Whilst you are right when you say
that more than tin-foil is required
to block radiation (working on the
design Radiation Tolerant chip right
now so I know what I'm talking about),
it WILL stop or at least dramatically
reduce magnetic interference.
You know, Faraday's cage...
J.
Redundancy is for posts like "Me too!" Have you actually READ the moderator guidelines?
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
Now I am beginning to get sucked into the Slashdot Sucks meme. The link is broken because you did not complete the "a href" part of the tag.
Can someone post the link so that I can know what I am supposed to posting about?
BTW, for my QA services, that will be $500. PayPal me at mindstorm@nospam.mediaone.net.
If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
Intersting hack. But I wonder if it's worth all the effort and sliced, bloddy fingers. It just seems you're putting too much effort in something that you won't get much back from.
Also there is one quesiton: stability? What happens when the homebrewed shield falls off?
RAMBUS prices will go down. For the rest of us, we will wait for that event.
If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
I wonder if you could take the n64 RDRAM chip out and rewire it to work it an x86 RDRAM.
And what's this i hear about the Athlons not having RDRAM? The preview on cpu-central said it would like 6 months ago...
http://siokaos.org/
Well, more speed is always good with RAM. RDRAM however, is a mixed blessing. The maximum transfer rates are great, but the latency is somtimes worse than with SDRAM, and it's not constant.
How could it benefit? Space exploration in the presence of stray electromagnetic fields? Nope, non-crashing computer in the presence of a cel phone. Of course, the case of the computer should already take care of that.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I don't think I mind pissing "you" off...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I think that attempting this would almost always be doomed to fail, since I don't think any reasonable motherboard would allow such a high FSB, and if it did, you'd get a shitload of trouble from stuff like the PCI bus being linked to the FSB and PCI devices not liking a higher clock...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Here is the working link...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
This article merely tells you to make an SDRAM module look like and RDRAM by giving it a shield agains electromagnetic emissions. This might have some benefit in very rare cases, but realistically, it's totally pointless.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Hello.
I don't know why all you have such a liking for facts, and reality and such. I just wanted to get a posting on the main page, and I found the page amusing because it did indeed have potential to be misleading. I was hoping that a news outlet would pick it up, and talk about overclocking alchemy and so on. and then Intel would freak out and start suing people, and then Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg would get involved...and somewhere along the line I would become a nerd martyr....ummm. yeah. so there.
-dennis the kid
Sometimes, it's not a matter of being cheap, it's a matter of not having enough money to buy the performance you want/need/crave/persue-with-reckless-abandon. I picked up my P3-450MHz for $325 (it was at the middle of last summer) and it runs happily at ~538MHz without the adition of extra hardware. Now when you consider that a REAL P3-550 would have cost me more than a hundred dollars MORE than my OC'd P3-538, and that (at the time) that $100 didn't exist in my money-to-burn account...
-Ma Tin Yuan
Who is glad that, three weeks later, he spent that hundred bucks he saved on buying CAS-2 PC-133 RAM instead of CAS-3 PC-100. He also OC's his TNT2-Ultra, and is considering OC'ing his modem to see if he can get below 300 ping with it...
I'd like to take this oppertunity to apologize for choosing a P3 over a celeron, but i do a lot of number crunching wherein the psudeo-parallel-processing provided SSE actually makes a difference, and i'm not REALLY going to OC my modem, I'll just go ahead and buy a whole new Magical-Pixie-Modem...
-Ma Tin Yuan
"If I overclock my SoundCard, will MP3's play back too fast?"
A metal shield over the chip will NOT reduce magnetic or radiation effects. The shield will simply SCATTER magnetic interference, NOT block it. RDRAM chips are engineered to protect against interference which encompases much more than tin foil. Personally, I prefer paying for RDRAM chips that actually do protect against interference rather than hacking a cheap DIMM chip and randomly scatter magnetic anomolies throughout my system RAM.
It's clear to me (a seasoned electrical engineer with 15 years of RF/EMC experience) that this author has too much time on his hands and is now about to waste the reader's time too. If the concern is EMI getting into the RAM chip (and slowing it down or screwing it up), then yes, a bit of a shield might do something (however minor). But, don't forget that these shields work both ways! If the traces on the boards and/or the IC leadframes themselves are radiating due to changing logic states (quickly!), then how do you think they will react to having that signal travel the short distance to the shield, and then being reflected back to the source? Adding signals together with a short time delay (travel time to the shield and back) is always messy and sometimes creates signal cancelation--which is not good!. Given the distance between the sources and the receptors, I'd say this chap is chasing the wrong idea. If he's worried about signals getting into his RAM and slowing it down, then better to have a good metal case on his unit and--if he's really concerned about signal reflections--perhaps adding a little carbon based RF absorber lining the inside of the case. I for one, don't want to start reflecting signals from my computer parts directly back into them by putting close spaced shields around the individual parts. The RAM boards were not designed with this in mind and most certainly have not been tested to operate in this fashion. So play all you want with your individual computer system, but please educate yourself before advising others that "This is a good thing. Try it." From my perspective, you're doing more damage than good to this community.
I have *never* seen a cpu be burned out from overclocking. Thats why most people use celerons, they are cheap and plentiful. Do you expect your current computer to still be around in a few years? Its not just a few more Mhz either. Since you are pushing the FSB beyond 100Mhz it starts getting faster than a pII. My dual celeron 333's have been running at a solid 500Mhz since september of last year. 167Mhz is a definite improvement. I can run them comfortably at 520 or even 530, but kernel compiles usually fail. My best compile time is 2:11 seconds.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is pretty interesting, but who has the time for this. I don't make a hell of a lot of money, but the price difference in the two types of memory isn't worth the amount of time it would take me to do this. I'd rather just go out and buy the RDRAM in the first place.
kwsNI
I agree about the voodoo. This is offtopic I know, but what I don't understand is why audiophiles go to such extremes as they do without worrying about the effects of static discharge on their expensive electronics. I don't have a business selling gold plated wriststraps and living room sized oxygen free rubber anti-static mats, but I'd get a real sense of satisfaction if I could persuade even one audiophile to take me seriously.
They sell special *thin* flexible tape used in RF shielded screen rooms. Basiclly like copper-foil tape. Wouldn't it just be easier to tape your RAM with that stuff and use an ag-clip for the gnd? The tape is available as non-conductive on the back(sticky) side.
See, RDRAM has large latency (approx. 28 cycles @ 400MHz for a random access = 70ns) but for sequential accesses it spews the data out very very fast indeed (a 16-bit-channel RDRAM setup at 400MHz can spew out 16 bytes in 4 cycles = 10ns; a 32-bit-channel dual-chip setup - only found in consoles - can double this to 32 bytes in 10ns).
This is great for consoles, where you have lots of DMA going concurrently with semi-random CPU cacheline refills. For this application, RDRAM is much, much cheaper than the alternative (which would be 128-bit-wide, 100MHz synchronous RAM of some flavor). RDRAM also wins hands down on simplicity of system design since its data bus is only 16 bits, or 32 bits in dual-chip setups, plus only 8 more bits for addressing. It provides superb theoretical bandwidth, which can be approached quite closely in a well-designed console (er ... can someone build a well-designed console for me? ;)
However, for PCs, the case is much less clear cut. DMA seems to be far less important these days, and you certainly won't see half a dozen concurrent DMA channels going over a 200MHz FSB anytime soon. Even building a 200MHz FSB would be practically impossible in a modular system such as the desktop PC. Consoles are so non-modular, the current crop are internally dense as hell with heatsinks and EMI shielding, and the primary internal busses are no more than half an inch long.
To make RDRAM work great with a desktop PC would take, in my estimation, far, far better RDRAM controllers than are currently available, and integrated much more tightly with the CPU, and communicating over a synchronous bus of at least 128 bits.
RDRAM definitely wins on bandwidth, but its latency is so atrocious that you need a good prediction of what data is needed next ... easy to do on a dozen DMA channels but when the primary channel is the CPU it's near-impossible.
In summary, RDRAM is too application-specific to be suitable for desktop PCs, and the controllers are not yet mature enough to get anything like full speed from it in Real World PC applications.
Not to mention the fact that it's proprietary, so it intrinsically costs more to manufacture than other RAM designs.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
This is why I don't put Slashdot with my bookmarks for News. How many times has faulty or unverified info been past along to us? If I am really busy I only browse headlines, something like this would catch quite a few "browsers" offguard. Maybe /.ers would do a service by moderating news stories.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
Agreed...read the TITLE tag...
Correct, it does say "Make your own RDRAM". This is very misleading, however, I think everyone has to look a bit below that, where it states that the article is a translation. I think everyone here who has ever used Babblefish knows what effects translations can do, even if the translator is human.
I hate to break it to these guys, but the frequency does not have much to do with the ammount of RF that is being emmitted from the chips. In order to emit RF, you must have an antennae. That is why the traces from the processor->north bridge->memory are so short (aside from latency). If an antennae is not tuned, or near a tune, it will not radiate much. Putting the shielding on the memory makes it look nice. The RF, if any, would be jumping off of the traces, not the memory. The other wires/traces would be picking up the RF, not the memory (you need antennae's to recieve too!) This is called crosstalk and that is why there are groundplanes between many layers of various boards.
An week in the laboratory will save an hour in the library!
Speeding never killed anyone. Stopping did.
This reminds me of high end audio freaks who paint the outsides of their CDs to prevent environmental light disturbing the laser, or fill their Amps with acrylic so the electrons in the circuits wont be affected by vibrations.
-- Newsraider.de - News aus dem Netz - German Geeknews Community
Let's hear it for moderation folks! (And for those of you who have itching fingers to mark this down as a troll or something, give it up. It's a serious post. Don't waste your points, find something actually worth reading somewhere and bring it to the top. If I was trolling I would not be using my name, as thats just stupid.)
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Does anyone want to do this for each and every SDRAM SIMM? There's a much easer way to cut EMI and heat; Get a small metal box that covers _all_ SIMMs, tape or paint the inside to prevent shorts, drop a heat sink & fan on the top.
I can't see all the extra work involved in the original except to brag "Look I Made My SDRAM look like a RIMM". Why not change your sports car to look like an old VW Bug?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It seems broken links not withstanding that the slashdot effect has already struck.
Did anyone download the article before their server died ?
Oh well I guess their server ran out of RAM and is thrashing itself to death as we speak...
Speaking as an EMI specialist...
Spread spectrum clocking has gradually phased into most modern PC architectures. Many vendors sell a clock driver that, given the master clock input, outputs a spread spectrum clock for the big nasty components in the computer (CPU, memory, etc.) and a separate, non-spread stable clock for the slower I/O components such as USB and ethernet. Typically the I/O clocks are much slower in speed and don't have high currents like the main system clocks. I/O is typically more stringent regarding "jitter" which is basically what you're doing when you use spread spectrum clocking.
Spread spectrum started more in the low-end computing products, like printers, since cost margins prevent you from using big expensive sheets of metal to shield the unit. Using spread spectrum allows you to get away with plastic enclosures. I recall Lexmark had in fact pioneered (and patented?) an early spread spectrum waveform.
And if you think suppressing EM interference from a PC is bad, try working on a gigabit switch router! We have to verify the system is EMI 'clean' up to a couple GHz, and with increasing speeds I see EMI requirements climbing up to 10GHz probably by years end.
Gary
I notice that this is a translated item and I wonder if the original was an April fool or some such.
To get an idea of just how different Rambus and SDRAM are inside you could take a look at "Dissecting Rambus" on Tom's Hardware Guide. A lot of the argument of this and the followup "Rambus Revisited" is why would you want Rambus anyway. Avoid spending the extra money and wait for DDR SDRAM.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
The guy who came up with this obviously has way too much free time on his hands.
Wake up SlashDot... This is obviously a load of bollocks and would result in any performance increase at all. At higher frequencies the problem is heat not signal interference.
Anyone else stupid enough to try this? Once again I will gladly eat my legs with a spoon if you get even a 10MHz improvement through this method.
You of course (on purpose most likely) ignore the utility advantage gained by messing with the product.
People overclock not only because the price differential (many ppl will overclock and spend more effort then they would looking for a better deal) but because we feel an emotional attachment to our computers and love tinkering.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
It looks like it would be a fairly straightforward project. If you have the skill to bend up a bit of copper and make sure it doesn't touch anything important, that's all there is to it. Basically the whole point of the project is to just shield the chip from EMI. You don't modify the chip or anything, just form a piece of copper and slip it over. If I were into OC'ing or owned a clear case (no shielding) I would jump right on this project.
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An armed society is a polite society
An armed society is a polite society
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is there some special syntax for making links? Im 120% sure that the HTML was correct. And the "Why does my links dont work" was WRITTEN IN THE BOTTOM..???!!?!?"?!"?
"Theres alotta savages in this town.."
I checked my code again and again.. and this is simple HTML. I code JAVA for a living 4 crying out.. And I always do my tags im lowercase.. I think i prettyer :o)
:o)
So thanks allot, if you ever get a java prob. be sure to write
"Theres alotta savages in this town.."
Check out this test sharky did, were talking VERY minor speed increases. in the actuall apps(err, games :o) :o)
Check out the mem. specific stuff here, not to worry. This link works
Why does my links act(i would have said something else, but i hurts my karma!!) up? the html is correct, THANK YOU.. and the complete mb review, here
Its interesting stuff, i know it saved me from running out getting a i820 based motherboard.
"Theres alotta savages in this town.."
That page was about reducing EMI in your ram in case you are overclocking your system, not converting SDRAM to RAMBUS. They just mention in the beginning why RAMBUS has the shielding.
EK-Hack
remove the SPAM from e-mail address
Documentation at tom's hardware.