The Most Common DDR DRAM Myths Debunked

[Guest]

Jim Reece debunks the most common computer memory myths with input from the Tom’s Hardware community and well-regarded DRAM manufacturers.

The Most Common DDR DRAM Myths Debunked : Read more

 

[damric]

Well that was a good read. Thanks Tradesman!

 

[Nuckles_56]

Thanks for the article, I've been [strike]im[/strike]patiently waiting for it since the first one

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Some if these could use a bit more detail.

"All DDR3 is the same" ... Just wanted to mention that in close on 25 years managing and participating in web forums, can't say I have ever seen this one put forth for either DDR3 or anything else. There are numerous differences, some matter not at all, some matter a little, some can matter a lot. It's crapshoot, but the odds are pretty good if you don't have a lot or large differences.

"Mixed DRAM Runs At The Speed (Or Timings) Of The Slowest DIMM" - I think this is just poor wording of the intent when this one is used. More correctly, it's much like video cards .... one card is advertised and guaranteed to run at one speed, the other a little bit faster. Like RAM, in SLI / CF you have a pretty good likelihood of setting them up to run at the lower of the two speeds. You have a lesser change of getting them both to run at the higher speed, tjo it's worth trying; that slower advertised card may have some headroom that was previously untapped

You also have the issue that 2 cards put more of a strain on the PSU and when that extra load is present, voltage stability suffers. Your faster card, with more voltage variation may not be able to handle the same OC that you had before the 2nd card's load was added.

Same w/ RAM ... one would presume that if a set of RAM was capable of a higher speed, it would have been binned and sold at the higher speed. As vendors respond to the variability of supply and demand, we may see better quality sets sold at lower rated speeds, which we can attest to by reading how many reviews in which the tester was able to get significantly higher speeds. So when someone says "will run", I have always taken it to mean "the likelihood is that it will be able to run at the less demanding of the two speeds / timings. As always, no guarantee. As it is, your likelihood of getting 2 1600 sets to work together is much higher than getting two 2400 sets to do the same. Success will be better at 1600 / 1600 and 1333 / 1600 than it will be at 2400 / 24500 or 2400 / 2666

I haven't been asked to do many upgrades since Sandy Bridge days (when some folks were still buying 2 x 4GB) but back then at 1333 / 1600 and 1600 / 1600 matchups, our success rate was well over 90%. And those difficulties came usually resulted from having different module OEMs. In the last 3 years, I'd say 9/10 builds started with 16GB and those who chose 8GB are still content, so don't get the opportunity any more.

"Just add more DRAM" .... I'd add that the most common cause if mismatch results from the maturation process of the production lines.... When DDR3 first broke 1333 was the most commonly purchased speed, as productions lines matured and yields improved this grew to 1600 and of late we have seen great yields on 1866, 2133 and now even 2400. As lines mature and yields improve, required voltage also comes down.

Initially, a vendor will usually buy their lower speed modules from one vendor and then sign on with a higher quality vendor to fill their needs for higher speed RAM. Over time, the lower price vendor's yields may be sufficient to supply their demand for the higher speeds. So we wind up with a situation where a vendor's product from 2012 will use one brand of module and one from 2015 will be from another. That presents quite a challenge for compatibility.

This can be particularly frustrating as one version from January 2012 and one from November 2014 might work fine and then one from November 2014 and January 2015 might have no chance in "H E double sticks" even tho every one of them has the exact same model number. Sometimes you can notice this by a slight change in timings. Several vendors offered 2400 at one time at 10-12-12-28, nor those same models are 10-12-12-30 or 10-12-12-31.

"It’s Cheaper To Buy Two Sets Of DIMMs Than Larger, More Expensive Sets" That's not a myth, at least not as stated.... they are cheaper. The "myth" as stated doesn't say anything about working . They may not run together at advertised speed but they are still cheaper.

"There Are Only A Few DIMM Manufacturers" .... given the limited 2 sentence attention this subject got, the topic should have been eliminated.

 

[djsvetljo]

Wait a second, I thought boards like Z97 have their own Memory Controller, separated from the CPU and 2400Mhz RAM is usually not a problem with Z97, am I right?

 

[TechyInAZ]

As always, thank you Tradesman! Such a big help.

Wait a second, I thought boards like Z97 have their own Memory Controller, separated from the CPU and 2400Mhz RAM is usually not a problem with Z97, am I right?

Nope, CPUs have the MC in the CPU itself. It's faster since it's directly in the CPU which also saves energy compared to the old way of storing it on the mobo.

I personally run 2400mhz on a Z97-A with a i5 4690K and I've had no issues.

 

[Dark Falz]

There were instances with past chipsets where 4 DIMMs would be faster than two, due to the way the chipset interleaved memory or leveraged reads. This was true of my Pentium 4 system (yes, I realise how old it is). Probably stopped with the IMC. I picked up a second 8 GB kit from eBay a few years after putting my IB together and lucked out, despite a few months difference in mfg date they work perfectly with the existing kit and appear to the same package/chips. They run at 1.50v too when they are rated at 1.65v. TBH I haven't yet seen any benefit from 16 GB vs 8 GB for anything I run, but I mostly just run games and Chrome. I suppose there's 8 GB more for Windows caching but that's less important with SSDs and modern streaming engines.

 

[Tradesman1]

Well that was a good read. Thanks Tradesman!

____________________

Appreciate it

 

[Tradesman1]

Thanks for the article, I've been [strike]im[/strike]patiently waiting for it since the first one

_____________________________

Thanx, have had a number of PMs and emails about when this would be published, it's been been done and waiting I will say, the staff at Toms is small and they are are no doubt overwhelmed with the number of pieces that they publish. Hopefully it will be of help to many

T

 

[Tradesman1]

JackNaylorPE

Comment - “Some if these could use a bit more detail.”

Always and forever true. In this particular piece, many items had more detail, examples and explanations as written. However I have no say as what they do with the piece once accepted. Originally it was one piece, with a working title of “DDR3 – FAQs and Fiction”, (have no idea where they came up with adding “and Troubleshooting Guide”, a guide to troubleshooting would be a step by step thing).

Comment - “All DDR3 is the same”

In the first piece introduction I stated “purpose of this article is to address the most commonly asked questions we hear, and to debunk some of the myths” - The “all DDR3 is the same” is a comment seen daily in the memory area of the forums, and as with the other is a myth, as I mention, this subject alone could be the basis for an article (as could others)
Comment – “Mixed DRAM Runs At The Speed (Or Timings) Of The Slowest DIMM"
Again this is a common misconception that is seen daily, and thus was included and explained.

Comment - "Just add more DRAM"

First, with the intro of DDR3, back with the 775 and 1366 mobos 1066 was the prominent data rate being sold, 1333 and 1600 were considered the ‘enthusiast’ data rates of choice. The 1366 CPUs were rate 800-1066. The early 1156 Pentiums and Celeron CPUs were rated 1066 and then the Clarkesdale and Lynfield i3-i5-i7 CPUs were rated to 1333. (Also keep in mind, the original JEDEC specs for DDR3 only went up to 1600 which was the max data rate).

This Item in particular was much larger and had an example of of a vendor making a model of a chip, binning it to different levels, selling them to different manufacturers who further binned them, etc, etc.. That part wart was sliced and diced Here you talk of chips produced years apart and seem to miss the point that you can sticks of DRAM right off an assembly line and they might play nice, they might not. This is why manufacturers test DRAM that goes into a package

Comment – “It’s Cheaper To Buy Two Sets Of DIMMs Than Larger, More Expensive Sets"

Keep in mind that this article was aimed at statements often see/heard coming from others giving ‘advice’ propagated by ‘experts’ and stated as a fact to those who are looking for 4 sticks for a single rig.

Originally I phrased it as “Just buy 2 sets of two DIMMs rather than those more expensive 4 DIMM sets, it’s cheaper”, to try and keep the title short. The statement/advice is true based on the idea that ‘generally’ (not always) the initial costs is lower as a pair of 2 stick sets, is normally cheaper than a 4 stick package, but in fact if they don’t play, you face return mailing fees or travel and your time, restocking fees, the fact that the store may not offer refunds, downtime from not having DRAM, etc

Comment – “There Are Only A Few DIMM Manufacturers”

Once again an item that was not presented as written, my line title for this, was that all too often heard “There are only a couple of companies that make DIMMS; then they all get rebranded”. My explanation may make better sense when read as an answer to my title (where I had it as ‘a couple’ rather than the editorial privilege taken by Toms to change it to say ‘a few’) . There are many that believe (mistakenly) that there are only couple of companies that manufacture DRAM and then put their name on them (rebrand).

I appreciate the comments (and have a feeling I’ll be explaining some of these over and over, as well as others )

 

[Memnarchon]

Great article, It was a good read indeed.
Just 1 thing.
For "13. 1.65 Volt DRAM Will Damage Your Intel CPU", I had a personal experience with previous generation DDR2 with overvloted RAM.
Back then (with a Kentsfield CPU) as you said the MC was in Northbridge. It was fine for many years running at the rated voltage over the normal DDR2 suggestion (I think the normal was 1,8V).
But one day after 6 years working fine, the MC from the motherboard died. The techguy that diagnosed the problem, said that this happened from years of overvolting RAM.
My dead $200 mobo suggests that this might not be a myth afterall.
But in the end this might be a problem that is left behind with DDR2 or Glenwood/Lakeport/Broadwater...

 

[Tradesman1]

As always, thank you Tradesman! Such a big help.

Wait a second, I thought boards like Z97 have their own Memory Controller, separated from the CPU and 2400Mhz RAM is usually not a problem with Z97, am I right?

Nope, CPUs have the MC in the CPU itself. It's faster since it's directly in the CPU which also saves energy compared to the old way of storing it on the mobo.

I personally run 2400mhz on a Z97-A with a i5 4690K and I've had no issues.

______________________________________

djsvetljo

Think TechyinAZ covered that The MC (memory controller) on the mobo, went to the wayside with the demise of the socket 775 mobos about 6 years. And yes, the 4790K should have no trouble w/ 2400 sticks, depending on the individual 4790K it may reuire a slight OC of the CPU

TechyinAZ

Thanx for jumping in and the comments, just found this published today via some PMs and emails

 

[Tradesman1]

There were instances with past chipsets where 4 DIMMs would be faster than two, due to the way the chipset interleaved memory or leveraged reads. This was true of my Pentium 4 system (yes, I realise how old it is). Probably stopped with the IMC. I picked up a second 8 GB kit from eBay a few years after putting my IB together and lucked out, despite a few months difference in mfg date they work perfectly with the existing kit and appear to the same package/chips. They run at 1.50v too when they are rated at 1.65v. TBH I haven't yet seen any benefit from 16 GB vs 8 GB for anything I run, but I mostly just run games and Chrome. I suppose there's 8 GB more for Windows caching but that's less important with SSDs and modern streaming engines.

----------------------------------------

Thanx for the response,

Yes, I ran into that with some older rigs also, and it can be true even today. This article had a working title of "DDR3 - FAQs and Fiction" and is aimed at todays DDR3 rather than the broader spectrum of simply DDR as Toms has entitled it, which to many will encompass the original DDR, DDR2 and even DDR4, which isn't how it was meant.

 

[Tradesman1]

Great article, It was a good read indeed.
Just 1 thing.
For "13. 1.65 Volt DRAM Will Damage Your Intel CPU", I had a personal experience with previous generation DDR2 with overvloted RAM.
Back then (with a Kentsfield CPU) as you said the MC was in Northbridge. It was fine for many years running at the rated voltage over the normal DDR2 suggestion (I think the normal was 1,8V).
But one day after 6 years working fine, the MC from the motherboard died. The techguy that diagnosed the problem, said that this happened from years of overvolting RAM.
My dead $200 mobo suggests that this might not be a myth afterall.
But in the end this might be a problem that is left behind with DDR2 or Glenwood/Lakeport/Broadwater...

_____________________________

Couple of things, The title given to this article is rather deceptive. My title for the article was simply "DDR3 - FAQs and Fiction" (Part 1 and Part 2), which to me was short,sweet and to the point, Toms decided to change and make individual titles to the two parts, in the first they added something about "and Troubleshooting Guide" which isn't the intent of the article - the intent was simply to look at FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and Fiction (to include Myths and Misrepresentations about DDR3 that are often heard). In this second part they call it, in part "Common DDR DRAM" which isn't accurate as that encompasses DDR, DDR2 and DDR4 which are different animals so to speak.

I don't know the circumstances of the failure you encountered, but have encountered those types of problems with DDR2 also, the MC (memory controller) was generally based within the NB chipset on Intel 775 and earlier mobos. That chipset was also running more than just the MC, primarily FSB, which would also OC the CPU and the rest of the rig, that in part was one thing that led to Intel moving the MC to the CPU

 

[Doug Lord]

Can you comment on quad channel vs dual? Of you had a x99 board would you go 4x4 for quad, or 2x8 for future upgrades?

 

[Tradesman1]

I always recommend getting the full amount of DRAM you want/need in a single package. I'm not a proponent of mixing sets of DRAM, as in adding DRAM to existing, as there is no guarantee the new will play with the old, which can lead to frustration, mailing/return fees, restocking fees and not having the DRAM when you want/need it if the new and old don't want to play. With a X99 I would go 16, 32 or 64GB in a 4x config to fully utilize the quad channel capabilities of the rig. While the article has had a title given to it by TomsHardware (my working title was "DDR3 - FAQs and Fiction") here in this second part they call it in part "Common DDR DRAM" which tends to imply DDR, DDR2 and DDR4 also, which wasn't intended (by me anyway). Have already seen where some are buying couple of sets of 2x or 4x packaged sets and having problems on X99

 

[g-unit1111]

"There Are Only A Few DIMM Manufacturers" .... given the limited 2 sentence attention this subject got, the topic should have been eliminated.

Can you elaborate on this one a bit more? Are you talking like the actual manufacturers that really assemble the DRAM or are we talking OEMs like Corsair that resell that already manufactured RAM?

 

[tsnor]

"Many people use more than 20GB at a time almost every day"

It's VERY rare to find a system where the windows pagefile size plus the total of memory approaches 20GB. The default page file size on my win7 system with 8GB of memory is 4GB, so the total backing space I have for virtual memory is only 12GB. My system cannot hit 20GB.

 

[jshoop]

I don't know about others, but i always said "all ddr3 is the same" meaning it doesnt matter what kit you get, if there are 2 kits with the same timings and speed ratings, get the cheaper one. They will perform basically the same. The myth brings up a misconception i never thought about, i hope i wasnt confusing people and spreading the rumor

either way, this was a good read. i like the work tradesman!

 

[Tradesman1]

"Many people use more than 20GB at a time almost every day"

It's VERY rare to find a system where the windows pagefile size plus the total of memory approaches 20GB. The default page file size on my win7 system with 8GB of memory is 4GB, so the total backing space I have for virtual memory is only 12GB. My system cannot hit 20GB.

_______________________

I think you'd be surprised at how may people will exceed 20GB at a given time, granted people doing single operations at a time aren't going to, but these days muti-tasking is more the norm, people are running VMs even on lower end rigs, video editing is common place. There's obviously many that do and it's accepted by the marketing people, last I looked the Egg was offering over 200+ 32GB sets in 4x8GB alone (and if you want to include DRAM + page file, they have over 700 16GB offerings....and 64GB offering continue to grow, there is now 128GB sets available and soon to be available

 

[Tradesman1]

I don't know about others, but i always said "all ddr3 is the same" meaning it doesnt matter what kit you get, if there are 2 kits with the same timings and speed ratings, get the cheaper one. They will perform basically the same. The myth brings up a misconception i never thought about, i hope i wasnt confusing people and spreading the rumor

either way, this was a good read. i like the work tradesman!

___________________

Thanks, I enjoyed writing this (in large part to help in the forums, now I can pop in a link to a part of this rather than have to typr out the same things over and over), but as I mentioned in the opening of Part 1, DRAM may well be the least understood component in a rig. The title that they stuck on this Part 2 is somewhat deceptive stating 'DDR' instead of 'DDR3', as DDR3 has gone through much more evolution wise than did DDR or DDR2 where the manufacturers stuck more to JEDEC standards and suppliers of chips and all were more limited.

 

[Tradesman1]

"There Are Only A Few DIMM Manufacturers" .... given the limited 2 sentence attention this subject got, the topic should have been eliminated.

Can you elaborate on this one a bit more? Are you talking like the actual manufacturers that really assemble the DRAM or are we talking OEMs like Corsair that resell that already manufactured RAM?

________________________

Both, there are numerous companies that make the actual ICs or RAM chips (i.e. Hynix, Samsung, Micron, Kingston etc, then too there are numerous companies that manufacture DIMMs (Direct Inline Memory Modules) or the actual sticks of DRAM that are used in a computer. You mention Corsair, they long manufactured their sticks in CA in and around the Fremont area. Think about 10-12 years ago they set up a large production facility in Taiwan which is where most is now manufactured.

 

[Joao Ribeiro]

Good job man, good and accurate article. Keep up the good work.

 

[Tradesman1]

Good job man, good and accurate article. Keep up the good work.

________________

Thanx, appreciate it

 

[Rogue Leader]

Great read.

Just want to laugh at the "Youll never need that much memory". In the late 80's we got a AST 386 SX computer with 4mb of ram and a 340 mb hard drive. At that time 2mb was the norm, and a 100 mb hard drive. So many people said "thats so much space, you'll NEVER fill it!" lol.