Can somebody explain this RAM jargon please?

[daveymark]

"The stick of pc2700 512 MB Crucial Memory was run at CAS 2-3-3 at 350 MHZ using 2.7V on an epox 8kA3+ MB"


Can someone please decipher the above statement in a way that a child would understand? Thanks

Mainly the CAS 2-3-3 part, the 350 Mhz part, and the 2.7V part

[Ultima]

PC2700 stands for 333Mhz, so it has been overclocked 17Mhz.

2.7V is the voltage it runs at.

cas 2-3-3 means that the cache latency is at 2, which is the fastest possible nowadays.

The other 2 I don't know for sure.

[jmichna]

Corsair has a great FAQ section at http://www.corsairmicro.com/main/tech.htm. Check out this document, especially sections 18 through 29.

Crucial also has a good FAQ section here: http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/search

Just put in search terms such as 'CAS' and 'CL2'

Here's the results for PC2700

PC2700 RAM normally runs at 166.67mHz, or 333mHz "DDR" (Double Data Rate i.e., memory reading on both the up-tick and down-tick of the memory cycle)

The 2.7 is the voltage (vDIMM) that the memory was set at to be stable at that overclocked speed of 350mHz (just a mild overclock, but most RAM I've used benefits from being overvolted a wee bit from default of 2.50v to 2.70 or 2.80, just for the added stability, even when run at stock speeds)

Specific to the EPoX 8K3A+ mobo, the RAM settings in BIOS correspond to the terms in the attached graphic (I lifted it from my EPoX manual). The values you gave "CAS 2-3-3" are not really complete nor well defined, so without the author being a bit more explicit, it would just be a guess to figure out what he meant. Usually the numbers correspond to Trp (Precharge-to-Active), Tras (Active-to-Precharge), Trcd (Active-to-CMD) and DRAM Command Rate (usually expressed as T1, T2, etc.).