Sdram timing 1

[moxiespal]

My BIOS has two options for Sdram timing, 2 and 3 cycles, can someone tell me what that means and which one to use, am running a 350 mhz AMD k2 and 100 mhz front bus speed. I use sdram 100 mhz, 288 megs total, 2 128's and a 32. Also, will 133mhz and 100 mhz sdram work together on the same board.
Thanks for reading,

 

[Guest_imported]

Theorethically PC133 and PC 100 should work together. But sometimes (it depedns of mainboard and memory manufacturer) they can conflict with each other. If you have a branded SDRAM (I mean Kingston or Micronics), then everythink will be O.K.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

If in doubt, use the lower setting.

Most PC133 memory is CAS 2, but there's still a lot of CAS 3 memory about. CAS (Column Access Strobe) cycles must be manually and correctly set, or the PC will develop a tendency to hang. If you're lucky, the information will be on the DIMM module.

CAS has been explained in other postings on this forum, but what it refers to is how many times per cycle the RAM is checked, by looking up the contents as a column of data. A smaller number is more efficient.

This link explains it very well indeed;

http://hardwarehell.com/ras_cas.htm

As Minde_tech says, most PC100 and PC133 (and even some PC66) DIMMs will work happily alongside each other, but will drop to the lowest chip speed. On your board, the fastest they can run at will be 100Mhz (the speed of the FSB on your board).

If the DIMMs are non-branded, or the motherboard does not support using both types, there is more of a risk that they won't work together. In most cases they should do.


I hope this helps

 

[Jakespeare]

My advice on this is:

** DUMP THAT OLD 32 MB Module***

Also: In the mainboard BIOS settings,,,,, (unless you know what your doing, and why, and what RAM you have)

* USE Timing by SPD
* or.... AUTO

That is it.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Well, this is a technical forum, Jakespeare, where we try to get "old" stuff working. Most people on Tek-Tips DO know what they're doing to a greater or lesser extent.

AUTO settings are for dumb user forums LOL