buffered & unbuffered RAM

[flamingarse1]

THAT WAS THE MOST HORRID INTRO EVER

[kzdz]

i rly try to listen but all i get is yawn -_-'

[thebeetalls]

i remember back in the days of athlon FX, fully buffered was faster in some cases, slower in most others. That was a long time ago so has this changed?

[IAreCrazyChris]

does the compatibility of your motherboard mater?

[mrbit10]

yes the chipset and cpu

[TheCoolestfilms]

so its Unbuffered for me as I need to have fatser ram but arent really bothered too much about scanning the ram everytime its used for errors.

[TheCoolestfilms]

Unbuffered is ram that doesnt scan itself and therefore is faster but may not tell you any errors and does and will not correct errors.

[TheCoolestfilms]

Buffered Ram is ram that is slightly slower than unbuffered..but is more expensive as it scans for any errors in the ram used at that time.

[TheCoolestfilms]

ssffsf

[commodore256]

Drunk Streaming:

ustreamer-50011: tidbit10 is gay

tidbit10: 45034- have you ever met one

Commodore256: tidbit10 pwned macward

tidbit10: I am just awe-struck by the balls

[nofear519]

what does front side bus mean?

[IamtheVOICE123]

You know, going back to your video when you talk about latency I am not to sure if you have noticed this, but over the years they have been coming out with lower latency, such as my DDR3RAM timing would be 8-8-8-24 and yet I do not experiance such latency issue. Might be because of the archetecture model of the buffer reducing the latency output. Not to sure if you knew this or not.

[mrbit10]

Of course over the years they have come down, but DDR3 is not equal to DDR2 in latency, DDR3 has much higher bandwidth, thus the debate of latency vs bandwidth. FB dimms are DDR2 with an AMB, you add to latency when you exceed two per channel.

[mrbit10]

of course the AMB adds to the latency delay this is for signal integrity. in workstations and servers, this is more cirtical (workload) vs speed.

[IamtheVOICE123]

True... I think the issue may finally be fixed in DDR4... can't remember what was the planned model that comes after DDR4

[piotrekno1]

hi i got new pc

with 2 ram sticks 1.5gb ddr2 dimm

and like 1 week ago i got 2gb ram so now i got 5gb of ram but i start getting a problem

i get bsod(blue screen of death) and some times my pc dont boot up properly

so i removed the ram and i still get the problems:(((((((

do i need to change stuff in bios????

please answer

[mrbit10]

sorry been on vacation for a week+, do you still have this issue?

[piotrekno1]

yes i get bsod and my pc sometimes not turns on :/ am very worried

[Dreambro1]

@piotrekno1 by another one at a garage sell for 10 bucks

[LANPTYMAN]

nice had motions

[MatrixfanMacUser]

mrbit10! Could you please tell the specs of your gaming rig? Just curious :) I "had to" build a gaming rig besides my mac. Now I am getting used to it, but I have to tell you I felt kind of stupid building another PC purely for gaming. The things I do for PC gaming, but I will never grow up :)

[mrbit10]

ha, lol well i many of my clients are windows based, but feel not guilt, i like gaming PCs over consoles any day. I have a core 2 duo @ 3.2 overclocked as games will not even use two cores and ballistix ddr2 ram and crossfire x1950 pros.

[Skutz0r]

i use a 3.2 AMD athlon dual core thinking of switiching to a intel quad core, Amd just dont have that spark anymore imo, intel chips just seem... more sturdy

[mrbit10]

AMD's new line should change that, i hope.

[superfreestyleer]

which type do you have prefer in your systems and which would you recomend for 1600mhz ddr3 i am on a very tight budget wondering if you know of any modules you know of that are dirt cheap or if i should what for the price to go down for ddr3

[mrbit10]

i prefer unbuffered in my gaming rig and buffered where i can afford it. As for your speed and bandwidth of 1600, it again comes down to timings in games vs bandwidth and DDR3 is still expensive and has a different structure than unbuffered DDR2. So wait in my opinion, you can overclock some mean DDR2 and get killer performance.

[superfreestyleer]

i was thinking i should wait also becuase of how much the price has dropped already also thanks for your quick reply

[ViciousDaveReturns]

Holly quality Mr. Bit! You must use Final Cut Studio, so crystal clear! Extremely informative video, thank you so much for explaining this.

[TheOnlyKingArthur]

Mrbit you have the best videos. I think that many people don't understand the differences between a workstation/server platform and a desktop platform which is why so many people try to compare the Mac Pro to a gaming PC. And like you said, they can't be compared. They are each designed to do what they are designed to do. A high end gaming rig will smoke a high end workstation at games, but the workstation will smoke the gaming rig at workstation tasks. Which is why I build/own some of both :-)

[IamtheVOICE123]

Sadly enough even the Mac user's will compare the Mac Pro to a gaming rig like Alienware. Reality is though at times it is not how the computer is built or what architecture it is, but how powerful it is. A lot of the design firms use Mac's but firms like Battle Media use powerful built computer's like Alienware to render videos. Reality is, they go both ways depending on how powerful the computer is vs. architecture. A LOT of people don't know this.

[diversenerd12]

mr bit your videos are perhaps the most informative i have ever seen. just wow.  5/5

[mrbit10]

thanks :)

[JavaGuy147]

thanks for the gaming bit at the end! if you truely want to test a computer's hardware, run AutoCAD and other Autodesk products or modeling applications! High-end workstations hardware are actually always one step ahead of gamers' hardware. Yet gamers think theyll all that haha

[doseryder]

Mr. Bit, I tried rewinding several times on the bit where you talk about how the Advanced Memory Buffer(AMB) acts as a repetitor and how the Memory Controller sends a read/write request to the memory module (or is it the AMB) and the AMB will ask if it is on *this memory module, repeat if it is not.Are you saying when you try to access a particular memory location(e.g.0xabcd0000) the memory controller still has to wait for the module 2perform some type of traversal to get to a specific location?

[doseryder]

I thought memory is arranged in an array of rows/columns.

Thanks.

[mrbit10]

ok, memory is rows in columns. The controller sends the address, command and data to the AMB, the AMB has a direct bus to all the DRAM on its DIMM therefore it basically has to route the controller information to the appropriate dram location, if that is not on the dimm it acts then as a repeater until the instructions from the controller find the appropriate AMB.

[mrbit10]

the actual DRAM all the way to the capacitor/transistor is arranged in rows and columns.

[mrbit10]

To answer the bottom of your question the controller sends the info to the first AMB on the channel and that AMB will know the address location if it is on the dimm, if not it acts as a repeater to the next AMB and so on. There are two paths, north and south for send/receive on each AMB.

[doseryder]

Okay, that rectifies my misconception. So it is the AMB which determines the correct/specified address location. "therefore it basically has to route the controller information to the appropriate dram location", this is what I meant by some type of traversal is required. (maybe not exactly the best choice of diction)

[doseryder]

If you don't mind, I like to venture into the next question. What you illustrated/explained was for the case of ONE channel, "controller sends the info to the first AMB on the channel ...". Can you briefly, in a sentence or two, describe the mechanism the controller uses to determine which channel to dispatch the instruction to in the case of,let say, a two "channel" memory architecture. Thanks again Mr.Bit!

[doseryder]

I assume there must be some type of mechanism to determine which channel the instruction (address, command, data) is dispatched to, if not, the latency will be ridiculous since you mentioned that the FBDIMM architecture allows multiple channels.

[mrbit10]

channel is a series of banks, so the memory controller would know how many channels are available. Is that what you are after or something else? The controller has to track the information it sends to each channel, not the AMB. the Chipset in FB architecture is already to go with multi channels basically where as on unbuffered it is switchable.

[doseryder]

As you mention earlier, "The controller sends the info to the first AMB on the channel ..." I suppose you were referring to a single channel scenario. What I was after was, in a multi-channel architecture, how does the controller know on WHICH channel it sends the info? On a digression, you should consider starting an IRC channel since you got such a large audience/fan base. =)

[mrbit10]

FB architecture is already multi-channel, the chipset IE memory controller knows the entire addressable area and therefore sends the data accordingly, channels just mean the bandwidth has been increased by the factor base width in theory. all channels have to be mapped by the controller and therefore appear as one addressable area with greater bandwidth

[mrbit10]

also note, that the AMB is not performing on its own,it is a slave to the controller as taking instruction from the controller.

[kingmicrosoft4ever]

more gay vids from a chomo...wow

[RPCJerkobi]

Really liked the video, DDR3 latencies are pretty insane though, some are around like 9-9-9-28 aren't they?

[mrbit10]

i have seen some in the 6s but yes they can get they high, but that is the real debate, bandwidth vs latency.

[mrbit10]

i should also add, that DDR3 works differently than DDR2, thanks for the comment.

[thisithis]

Nice vid. :)

[MatBookPro93]

nice to see a vid from you mrbit,

its been a while

[AppleSoldier]

great job MB. You are the best at this kind of stuff. Im a FB man myself. Mac Pro baby! If you edit video, or have a server you want Fully Buffered. If you games or do normal stuff you need unbuffered. FB means series stuff.

[mrbit10]

thanks :) the skulltrail mobo which I believe was a gaming chipset did indeed use FBdimm and I remember reading a review about the latency, BUT FB given enough in parallel or if they reduce the timings as with DDR3 is doing it could match the latency loss. Check out RAMBUS XDR XDR2

[IamtheVOICE123]

On fully buffered ram explanation I think you probably meant an interlaced serial pathway lol, kind of the hardest things to remember with this kind of subject would be the correct name of the pathways lol

[AppleSoldier]

No, your more than likely wrong. This guy designs software for a living. You always v=come in here acting like you know as much as the guy talking. get over yourself and quit acting like an expert on everything

[IamtheVOICE123]

Hey I know pretty much everything he stated in this video, he just left one word out which I thought I should point out. When it comes to RAM there is probably way to much names and variables to remember. It was just a friend pointer you don't have to take everything as an attack on someone, it's just correcting them like I do with your videos more than often and you see it as an attack.

[robbansv]

Great video! Looking forward to seeing more videos on this topic.

[blacksteel25]

Hey Mrbit, was IDE connections Serial or Parallel?

[mrbit10]

Parallel, SCSI and SATA, PCI Express - serial

[MatrixfanMacUser]

Top notch video! Anandtech benchmarked the first mac pro in 2006. The gaming tests clearly showed the latency of FB DIMM memory. However there was so much performance headroom that the MP could also double as a fantastic gaming rig. I tried a PC 4870 1 GB under Vista and performance was simply stellear. Ony if recent graphics cards were available for the Mac... Ah, Computing heaven I say :D

[bullboykennels]

Very well said man, & great info as well.

[B1naryIllusion]

O.o Really in depth, and clear. Not to long, nor to short either. I really like this video because it explains all of the questions I had about RAM. I just thought it was a temp place for data.

5 Stars!

I'm subscribing too!

[vls1dragon]

Excellent video. One simple question, what would you say is more efficient, in a nutshell. 2GB of RAM(two 1 GB sticks), or 2GB of RAM(one 2 GB stick)?

[mrbit10]

this used to be an issue in older ram but today not so much, if you have dual channel, then split the load. In many cases the margin of difference outside of dual channel is not considered noticeable via the whole system.

So if you have dual channel, split the load, if not.. it is up to you as in cost and when you decide to upgrade later.

[bombkangaroo]

In terms of power drawn from the wall: 1*2GiB.

In terms of bandwidth: 2*1GiB.

[mrbit10]

you know i should have talked about power consumption. FBdimms draw more power than the unbuffered. They exert a lot of heat as well and is why they have heat spreaders on them. thanks for the comment.

[thomashome05]

Good video for people who are starting into understanding RAM and going in to depth with it. Four Stars!

[1xxxxxxdreamxxxxxx1]

what would you recommend to learn all the basic kind of stuff to do with all pc stuff? im dying gto learn but need somewhere to start you know?

[chazybrewster]

Fantastic video; great explanations-will look forward to future videos. Don't worry about video length, they are great and typically your longer videos are even more interesting

[IridiumVIII]

Great content and visuals.