PCI RAM Extender Cards? 50
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?"
Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just buy a computer with a sensible number of dimm slots to begin with.
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:2)
Consider that the ram drive, if using an ATA or SCSI interface would still plug into the PCI bus as some point.
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:2)
Access times would be faster. It would take less time to find the data on the drive -- it would not have to seek.
Latency would be the same though.
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:1)
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:1)
How do you figure that?
Re:Don't buy an unexpandable Dell? (Score:1)
Latency, or the time to find the data on the drive, would be much faster - no mechanical drive parts involved.
Access time is latency + transfer speed. And transfer speed is going to be somewhat slower. (Ram = always at max speed (~132MB/s?). HD = up to max speed (~133MB/s w/ U-ATA 133), if from HD cache or contiguous sectors only - but for random access, it's typically ~2-5MB/s).
And the latencies of hard drives are on the orders of milliseconds, while RAM is on the order of tens of nanoseconds.
'got one (Score:2)
It's an IBM MCA expansion board which supports 4 EDO-RAM.
Not going to work (Score:5, Informative)
Of all the things that a motherboard (or more specifically the collection of microchips known as the chipset) connects together the connection between the memory and the processor is the fastest the most important to performance. No other link, except between the processor and the motherboard even comes close in importance. Also, another issue that comes up is what is known as latency. Latency is the delay the system experiences when it requests memory access. It's not just how much data you can transfer, but how quickly you can have it after you ask.
For all those reasons it almost always makes sense, especially at today's prices, to have all the same memory modules in your system and the fastest memory your system can support. Even if you are able to recycle memory I would avoid doing so unless stability is an issue as many technical issues arise when DIMMS are mixed and matched.
Re:Not going to work (Score:4, Interesting)
Not worth it... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not worth it... (Score:2)
Re:Not worth it... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not worth it... (Score:2)
Good idea... also consider charity, just be sure to label them clearly.
Re:Not worth it... (Score:2)
Or how going from 64mb to 192mb will turn a PII 266 into a surprisingly usable multitasking desktop, for example. RAM does wonders for slower processors running recent OSes and applications.
Why buy a limited system? (Score:2, Informative)
But that said, why even buy a system if it limits you before you have even opened the box? Ram is so cheap nowdays you have to be really stingy to not meet your base requirements, even if that includes a ton of Photoshop work, or most any other ram-intensive app. (Server stuff not withstanding.)
If possible, buy your Dell with minimum RAM posible, and buy 3rd party ram new to replace it, the largest size you can buy on a DIMM. That will give you 2x the maximum. If that isnt enough though, DONT BUY THAT SYSTEM! As for using the old ram, that will only slow your system down anyway. Deal with obsolescence and either reuse it in another system, sell it for a token sum, or give it away to someone who can use it. I tend to pass old hardware I have no need of anymore to friends or family.
Are you a retard? (Score:1, Troll)
- A.P.
Ask Slashdot: PCI RAM Extender Cards? (Score:5, Funny)
from the I-have-no-idea-what-bus-bandwidth-means dept
Re:Ask Slashdot: PCI RAM Extender Cards? (Score:2)
You would have thought thise question would have been rejected by the editors wouldn't you? Yet they commonly reject pointers to truly insightful projects. Are the editors just as dumb as the people who ask these questions, or are they just trying to cater to a dumbed down crowd to get more viewership? Inquiring minds want to know.
Re:Ask Slashdot: PCI RAM Extender Cards? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ask Slashdot: PCI RAM Extender Cards? (Score:2)
Re:Ask Slashdot: PCI RAM Extender Cards? (Score:1)
Dude! I got a Dell^H^H^H^Hpiece of crap (Score:1)
as for getting an extra stick in, you would have to hardwire a stick or connector to the chip
Re:Dude! I got a Dell^H^H^H^Hpiece of crap (Score:2)
Talk about Ask Slashdot answers you never really want. Though it seems to be the only viable solution that doesn't involved getting a Dell.
The real problem (Score:2)
Well there is your problem right there. Buy a machine with a different motherboard. If people keep buying machines with only 2 slots then companies have no incentive to supply boards with more slots. Personally I wouldnt buy a pre-made machine - ever. I prefer to have control over every component. (Obviously I'm not talking about the Mac here).
Re:The real problem (Score:1)
Re:The real problem (Score:2)
Yeah - I agree totally. I have an old Sun SPARC Ultra 5 for example which is hardware that you just can't get anywhere else. As for a PC however, I can build them to my precise specs cheaper than I could buy them pre-made. I do a lot of audio recording so I need the performance, hence I have things like LVD-SCSI controllers and LVD drives etc. I choose my motherboards very carefully for performance and expandability.
When buying a pre-made PC you are paying firstly for the cost of someone building it, then of course there is the proprietary things that some manufacturers do that means you cant simply upgrade the board. At least the guy asking the
Usually... (Score:1)
No, you can -usually- build them cheaper than you can get them pre-built. Of course some times you get lucky and catch Dell blowing out old stock.
I bought a Dell Poweredge 500SC server (1.2GHz with two 80G IDE drives, CD-ROM, keyboard/mouse, Intel Pro100b NIC, etc... no monitor) for $315 (plus tax) delivered. That's less than $2 a gig for the entire server for a gigahertz+ class machine. If it breaks they send someone to my house to fix it (as if!)
For the record, Dell memory is hideously expensive. I upgraded the server to 1G of ECC registered for another $100 (yea Fry's!) It has three more slots for RAM in case I am feeling frisky.
Use it as swap (Score:1)
Then you mount swap on it. This makes swapping very very fast. And increases performce once you start swapping.
Now all you need is a card that can do it
Your looking in the wrong area (Score:2)
They used to make these for 30-pin and 72-pin, but seemed to stop when 168 and 184 pin dimms rolled around. I only did about 5 minutes of searching on google, but you might be able to find someplace actually selling that.
HAHAHAAHHA dumbass (Score:2)
It doesn't really make a lot of sense when you can just buy a couple of 256 or 512mb sticks for somwhere between 100-200 bucks.-- Or buy a computer that doesnt suck. (The dells with only two ram slots are pretty budget)
used to be something like this for simms... (Score:2)
Mmmm, bus RAM (Score:3, Informative)
Today it doesn't make any sense.
OTOH, the ram drive you mentioned might make sense (except that it is pretty expensive) if you used it for a swap partition.
I think that a better overall plan would be:
1. Don't buy a RAMBUS based system.
2. Buy one that supports an unreasonable amount of RAM, with only one slot populated with the largest module it supports. In a few years it won't seem like so much.
3. Reconsider buying a Dell. If you know how many DIMM sockets it has you aren't the target customer.
-Peter
Possibly a chipset limitation (Score:2)
2 x 256 fills that up nicely, there's no point in having 3 slots, what are you going to do, 2 x 128 + 1 x 256? Just doesn't make sense.
Re:Possibly a chipset limitation (Score:1)
Your answer. (Score:1)
2. Buy new RAM and sell the old on Ebay.
Not a brilliant idea... (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.
Just buy bigger ram sticks. (Score:1)
A 512mb PC133 stick is $50, and a 256mb PC2700 stick is $80. PC2100 is about $65 for 256mb. That's cheaper than getting a new mobo. Just throw out one of your 128mb dimms and replace it with a bigger one.
People have said PCI is slow... (Score:2)
I think it's about time for this -- 128 MB and 256 MB sticks are dirt cheap... go up past 512 MB and you're creeping towards the double the price per MB mark.
AGP-slot RAM-Drive - possibly a good idea. (Score:1)
However, device manager ("view by connection") in my Win2K system shows the AGP card hangs off the PCI bus via a PCI-to-PCI link. Does this mean that AGP runs off a higher-speed PCI bus?
There *ARE* good reasons for this approach (Score:1)
Not what is intended here though.
Consider something along the lines of a Squid cache built using inexpensive harware, that boots from flash. Because it's inexpensive, the chipset only supports, say, 512MB RAM. But you want an 8GB cache (hypotheticals courtesy of Swelltech for 1 T-1s worth of bandwidth. So we're talking solid state here.
Someone's going to go off half cocked here and say I'm talking out both sides of my mouth, inexpensive but blah blah blah. We'll I *produce* similar devices now for clients (I don't necessarily CHARGE inexpensive because of the huge benefit they receive, what it would cost them for something similar) only I'm currently stuck using hard drives. So what if this RAM based psuedo-drive is PCI bus bound. I don't need it to persistently store data between reboots.
Re:There *ARE* good reasons for this approach (Score:1)
8 GB RAM in PC133 is currently about $400 using 512MB modules. That's cheap. So, a PC with a Flex-ATX motherboard with built-in NIC, etc., at roughly $80, case of your choice (desktop, rackmount, etc.), this PCI RAM card with 8GB, running something akin to LRP LRP or offshoot LEAF makes a lot of sense. Using an inexpensive case, the aforementioned motherboard, a 256MB DIMM (based on the requirements from the Swelltech site and LRP/LEAF), the PCI RAM card and the 8GB of cheap RAM done as a RAM drive, and you've got an incredibly fast Squid cache, far faster than any hard drive based one out there. Then consider that you a) have no hard drive to worry about (you can just power it off and not worry about having to fsck the damn thing) and b) you got this for short money (a freakin' RAM card should be extremely cheap that's not telling the host system that it's a hard drive).
Cheap, fast, effective.
Re:There *ARE* good reasons for this approach (Score:1)
http://www.platypus.net/20qikdrive.asp [platypus.net]
2 slot model can hold 2 gigs
8 slot model can hold 8 gigs
from page: "sustained data throughput speeds of up to 110MB/sec."
and if thats not enough, the cards can be spanned to create huge ram drives
Re:There *ARE* good reasons for this approach (Score:1)
found something (Score:2)