CPU-Z

[tomski1981]

Hi, here's an interesting situation:

i ordered and payed for 'Kingston PC2-8500 DDR2 1066s'... the PC store gave me empty packages of 'Kingston PC2-8500 DDR2 1066s'... i looked inside the case and i see sticks with a sticker on the side that says: 'Kingston PC2-8500 DDR2 1066s.'

i run CPU-Z, and in the 'SPD' tab, under max bandwidth, it says i have 'Kingston PC2-6400 DDR2 1066s' running at 400MHz

who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

 

[badge]

JDEC standards do not rate DDR2 greater than PC26400 800MHz. (like there is not standard rating for PC28500 1066 MHz.). So, ALL PC28500 will show up as JDEC standad PC26400, which is what it is technically. Buying the PC28500 DIMMs you did, Kingston guarantees the DIMMs to run at 1066Mhz., BUT you will have to go into BIOS and set the voltage, timings and speed manually, and that is mandatory. So, no you are not ripped off.

 

[tomski1981]

cool thanks.. i'm so glad it's all so confusing

 

[ausch30]

cool thanks.. i'm so glad it's all so confusing

That's the biggest problem with RAM. The manufacturers pretty much rate memory any way they want which makes it difficult to compare different models. DDR3 is even worse because the standard for DDR3 is 1.5v but it's difficult to find any sold at that voltage. The big reason for that is that the timings are something like 9-9-9-18 and no one will buy memory with those timings. The whole reason for the JEDEC standards is to set a baseline for comparison of different memory modules but you can't even do that because you don't know what the JEDEC settings are until you install it. That is why I tell people to buy the lowest timing memory they can find while staying as close to the JEDEC standard voltage as possible (1.8v for DDR2 and 1.5v for DDR3). This should ensure that your getting quality chips.