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PCI RAM Extender Cards?

Posted by Cliff on from the bypassing-design-oversights dept.

stevejsmith asks: "I'm going to buy a Dell computer which supports DDR RAM, however it only comes with two DIMM slots. I have lying around two 128MB sticks of RAM, and want to use them. I know RAM is cheap, but I want some way to put more than two DIMMS in this system. Short of getting a new motherboard, is there any way I can add more RAM? On Slashdot I remember seeing a PCI card that help RAM for a RAM drive, but is there such thing as a PCI card that just held regular RAM for system usage? If not a PCI card, any other suggestions?"

5 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? by Toraz+Chryx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Putting ram on a PCI card is a bad idea in this day and age, peak PC2700 memory bandwidth is 2.7GB/s, peak 32/33 PCI bandwidth is 132MB... that presents something of a bottleneck :)

    Just buy a computer with a sensible number of dimm slots to begin with.

    1. Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? by Directrix1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Here's the deal. Buy the ram drive. And make that your swap drive. Works just about as well as more RAM.

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  2. Re:Not worth it... by tunah · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Point taken, but you will get something for it to offset the cost of the new ram.

    Depending how cheap ram is at the moment, it might not be worth it, in which case find a friend who doesn't have much ram and give them the chips. Many people don't realise how much of a difference going from 128M to 256M or 256M to 384 or so makes.

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  3. Re:Ask Slashdot: PCI RAM Extender Cards? by ignorant_newbie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    actually, if you go through the archives of "ask slashdot" recently, you'll see that they pretty much only post flamebait

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  4. Not a brilliant idea... by Epsillon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...to put system RAM on the PCI bus. RAM needs to talk directly to the L2 cache, and in this day and age that means the processor. DDR RAM is so cheap you really shouldn't bother. If you want to do something useful with your old memory, go to a local school and upgrade one of their PCs with it!

    The board you mention was probably the HyperDrive, a PCI based pseudo-hard disk drive that uses an external power supply and SDRAM as the media rather than a physical spinning magnetically coated disk. They require quite specific amounts of memory and you pay more the more they take, even if you get them without the DIMMs.

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