[SunRescue] Re: Re: Memory source recommendation

[Robert Novak]

I thought I heard a "Matthew Haas" say:
> 
> > >From what I'm told, you don't have to have Registered ECC, so CL3 is
> > $96.29, CL2 is $98.99. Prices may be different by the time I hit send, of
> > course, but that's pretty good.
> 
> Just curious, what exactly is the deal with this "Registered", "CL2", and
> "CL3" stuff on memory?

All the answers are pretty well explained in
http://support.crucial.com/scripts/crucial.exe/faq (or other memory FAQs
for that matter).

I'll summarize briefly from what they have there....

CL2 and CL3 are named for the number of clock cycles to load the first
piece of data. CL2 takes 2 clock cycles, CL3 takes 3. After the first
load, the rest is the same. Most systems won't care about CL2 vs CL3. They
can be mixed in systems that don't care.

Registered is a type of memory used mostly in server boards and
high-chip-count memory modules. There is a register that places a one
clock cycle delay on memory transfers. most PCs will not take registered
SDRAM, and you can't mix registered and unbuffered. 

In financial terms, CL2 is faster so it costs a bit more (usually) and
Registered is usually noticeably more expensive than unbuffered memory. 

Hope this helps,
Rob

-- 
Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
        "And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
           Maybe this year will be better than the last...." -- counting crows