[nanahachi]

Hey all

I have searched pricewatch monthly trying to find RDRAM at a price I can live with, with little success. My Dell only takes RDRAM PC800 (I believe).

I was thinking of going for 2 sticks of 256mb, but that would cost me just about $200 for Samsung or Kingston. I chose them for their reliability, performance, and warranty. Are there other brands I should get instead?

I really dont have much to spend, esp since I may have to get a (tiny)laptop for grad school (i still cant find a small, really portable one for under $1500)...Any help you guys and gals can provide would be really appreciated.

Thanks so much.

 

[ai0tron]

Your screwed, why'd you buy a Dell? And most of all, why'd you get RDRAM??

 

[nanahachi]

yknow, i knew that your post wouldnt help a bit before even reading it. thanks for staying predictable.

 

[Ebonyks]

Ai0, perhaps it's an older motherboard, something before decent DDR chipsets came for the p4.

As for your question, I don't think there's really much that you can do. For the price of 512 (2x256) of RDR, you could buy a DDR based motherboard, and 512 megs of ram for it. That, or just bite the bullet, and spend almost 200 dollars on ram

Edit: here's the cheapest place i could find Here

 

[penvzila]

Exactly what motherboard do you have? It *might* be possible to get a new mobo and 512 megs of DDR ram for around or less than 200$. Cause DDR ram is frickin cheap for sure (i got 1 gb of pc2700 Mushkin Enhanced for 250$), and motherboard prices are making me think about upgrading again.

Whoops, didnt read the other posts.

 

[ai0tron]

It's difficult to put a new motherboard in a Dell case. Mainly because they use their own proprietary case design and wiring.

Because of that it might be difficult to have a heatsink on your processor or something like that because of space concerns if you get a new motherboard. For instance, the cpu socket might be partially obscured by the power supply, or something lame like that. Also, those bastards often do weird stuff with the ports on the back of the system. This is especially true if you have on-board sound.

The best course of action, is to make sure you only buy computers from Dell and the like if you're rich, or really busy. Otherwise, have fun, build your own computer, that way you know it'll be easy to swap parts out.

 

[wallijonn]

I'm also in the RDRam camp. I bought 512M and it should have been ECC.

Now I want another 512M of Samsung. it went down to $75 a stick a few months ago. Just make sure that you buy before November, as that is when all the prices start inching up due to the holidays.

you're just going to have to bite the bullet, as I am, on this one.

and don't worry - even if you had DDR, you'd be worrying about PC2100 vs PC2700 vs PC3200 vs... CAS3.5 vs CAS2.5...

 

[nanahachi]

thanks guys for your suggestions.
ai0tron, I'll keep that in mind for the future, thanks.

wally, if you spot cheap prices on Rambus, please let me know. I'd be willing to spend $75 a stick for 512 of samsung...$150 for a gig sounds ok. not a deal, but i could live with it.

I just need to buy it before I stop working....

 

[wallijonn]

well, seeing as how you need 2 sticks at a time, that's $150 and $300 repectively. how many slots do you have? my ECS has 4 slots.

the longer we wait, the harder it will probably get to get PC800 non-ECC 45ns RDRam. Guess you can always downgrade to PC600.

buying a whole new machine at this time (a newer motherboard will probably necessitate getting a new CPU) is not viable, as the 64 bitt'ers are around the corner. so besides new CPUs, there will be new mobos and new memory to buy. 32 bit memory sticks will not make the grade.

personally, i will not mix different manufacturers, so I have to stick with Samsung; Kingston, et. al., is not an option. and there's no way that I would buy Fry Electronics "generic" RDRam, or any generic, for that matter.

the smallest laptops I ever saw were made by Toshiba. now, they'd be too slow. which only leaves the Compaq/HP type of PDA computers. they have foldable keyboards. it's time they came up with foldable displays.

 

[nanahachi]

yeah, wally i misread the part of your post re: price

on dealram.com i found:

Samsung Rambus 256MB 16bit 800MHz 40NS Memory ***(Free 2nd Day)***

@ googlegear.com
http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produc...ctCode=80455-8

so i guess thats $164 for 512mb total. I believe I have 2 slots, I'm going to have to look into it.

thanks for the info! gluck wally, keep me posted what you find.

 

[wallijonn]

http://www.target-sale.com/tusa/item...ry/i02117.html

$72 - $73 each. (from www.pricewatch.com) PNY PC800 256MB

 

[penvzila]

Quote:

Originally posted by wallijonn and don't worry - even if you had DDR, you'd be worrying about PC2100 vs PC2700 vs PC3200 vs... CAS3.5 vs CAS2.5...

Not really. Just get the highest your motherboard supports. For me that's pc2700

 

[Mr.PD]

I wish that price walli found would have been around when I added 512 to my Dell. I got mine on special at Dell and it still cost me around 260 bucks.

 

[dd3mon]

You could get a new motherboard, ram and a cheap case to replace the dell one and aid in motherboard replacement

This would not only give you the advantages of more ram, but also the speed advantages of new ddr and the excellent dual-channel ddr chipsets intel rolled out (865PE/875). Great Stuff.

If you're not so DIY-ish with computers, just shop around for some samsung rdram (pricewatch.com - check reselleratings.com if you find a good deal from a smaller shop). You didn't make a horrible decesion in buying your machine, rdram was a good choice when you purchased your system. The technology perhaps has more potential than ddr/sdram, but it got screwed up by Rambus, and their attempt to take on the entire world one inane patent at a time. Intel was forced to choose DDR because Rambus drove itself into the ground.

-dd3mon

 

[wallijonn]

Quote:

Originally posted by penvzila Not really. Just get the highest your motherboard supports.

True enough. Unless he is to contemplate a new motherboard. Then what would you suggest? Therein lies the problem. It's for the same reason that he is not contemplating PC600 memory.

Besides, many people buy the higher mem speeds to see if they can overclock to a standard fsb. Is it worth 20% more $ to get 3% more performance? If it came down between choosing CAS 2.5 PC2100 vs CAS3.5 PC2700, I would choose the PC2100.

If overclocking is not a consideration, then the question becomes "why pay for features you are not likely to ever use?" So, again, the issue is money.

Should he spend another $150 for technology which is obsolete? He must weigh this against buying the newest and greatest now, which will soon be obsolete, or forsaking it all together.