Computer Memory - What To Buy? by Michael Russell
In this article we're going to discuss, first off, how to determine what kind of memory your computer uses and how to decide what to buy to fit your needs. Unfortunately, not all computer memory is alike and the make of your motherboard will determine what memory you will need to get if you want... So, if you put in a memory chip of a higher speed, your computer will only run it at the maximum speed the system is capable of and buying a faster speed chip is just wasting your money. ... Most computers have non-parity memory and do not need error checking in their chips.

Computer Memory Problems by Michael Russell
In this article we're going to concentrate on why and how memory goes bad and what causes memory problems. If you've ever worked on a PC and all of a sudden in the middle of blasting the heck out of some space invader your PC goes black and then suddenly reboots look no further than some kind of... When this happens many times the memory locations overwritten just happen to be where the operating system is running and that's what causes your computer to reboot. ... Sometimes though the problem is with the memory chip or chips themselves.

Buy DDR Computer Memory — A Quick Guide by Helen Charleston
Buying DDR computer memory chips requires several considerations, including clock speed, clock frequency, transfer rate, storage space, electronic interface capabilities, on-die termination, prefetch buffers, off-chip drivers, latency, band width, and operating voltage, some of which rise or... Buying DDR computer memory chips is important in enhancing computer system performance in one way or another. ... As can be seen, when buying DDR computer memory chips, each one is noticeably different than the others and therefore has a contrastive price.

Computer Memory - Does RAM Latency Matter? by Michael Russell
In this article, which is going to get quite technical for you non techies, we're going to debate the issue of whether or not RAM latency matters when choosing memory for your computer. My apologies in advance if some of this stuff seems like it's out in the stars. ... Without getting super technical here, when tests were conducted on various high end systems, which is where you need your highest performance boost, the improvements with low latency RAM chips came out to a meager 1% improvement in speed over regular RAM chips for the cheapest of the low latency chips and only a 3%...

I-RAM, M-RAM: Good Bye to Hard Drives? by Marcelo Reyes
A couple of weeks ago, one of my lab associates made a comment about the advantages of the I-RAM and its speed with respect to the hard drive. What is an I-RAM? I asked. Simple. They are a bank of DDR memories that are used as a hard drive. They are powered through a PCI port and use a SATA... This Technologies main advantage is that the chips keep the information stored even after the system is turned off, which means that computers and other devices can now be supplied with non volatile memory ready to use at the moment the devices are turned on.

History of the Computer - Memory Error Correction Codes Part 1 of 2 by Tony Stockill
We have mentioned before, in the history of the computer series, that various forms of error correction are used, in cases where the medium is unreliable. This applies mainly to magnetic tape and disks. The magnetic coating on the recording surfaces is subject to wear, various codes such as CRC... The early introduction of these memory types in mainframes saw the re-introduction of the Hamming code. ... Multiple bit errors caused a recovery process to be initiated, causing lost time, a situation frowned upon in computer circles!

Computer Memory – A Vital Part of a PC by Paul MacIver
Any device that holds data for a computer for a short period of time is called computer memory. If you have spent even just a little time with any computer, you will hear about RAM, Hard Disks, or CD's and DVD's. All these are means to store the information from a computer. ... RAM and Other Types of Memory: The primary characteristic that separates RAM from other types of memory is the fact that any memory location RAM can be accessed at almost the same speed in a random manner. ... In modern computers the random access memory (RAM), a solid-state memory, is attached to the CPU using a...

History of the Computer - Cache Memory Part 1 of 2 by Tony Stockill
We looked at the early digital computer memory, see History of the computer - Core Memory, and mentioned that the present standard RAM (Random Access Memory) is chip memory. This conforms with the commonly quoted application of Moore's Law (Gordon Moore was one of the founders of Intel).It... Chips of a certain design were faster, hotter and more expensive than chips of another design, which were cheaper, but slower. ... If the memory in question is core memory, it will take maybe 1 microsecond to read an instruction.

Computer Memory - Flash Memory by Michael Russell
Flash memory is a form of EEPROM memory, which is Electrically-Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory. It allows more than one location to be written to and erased in just one operation. Flash memory is what is called non-volatile. That means it does not need power to retain the information that... This limits its use to mass storage devices like PC cards and memory cards and makes it much less useful for computer memory. ... The benefits of this type of flash memory over NOR flash memory is that it has faster erase and write times, it's density is higher, and the cost per bit is much lower.

Choosing The Right Graphics Card - A Buyers Guide by Harry Love
If you are a serious gamer or graphics designer, you know how important having a good video or graphics card is. For those that don’t know, your video card or graphics card is what renders the images to your computer. If you are upgrading or building your own computer, considering what your... There are some memory cards that can come with as much ram as some computers. ... Many of the better graphics cards also come with their own on board memory so they don’t take away from the computers ram. ... Just like with any other computer part, a graphics card can overheat if it is attempting to...