how to find the bus speed of my RAM

rmanocha · 01-16-2004, 01:23 PM

hey guys,
I have a year old dell machine with 256 MB ram on it.i want to upgrade this to 512(or even more maybe).I know how to find out the PC no. of the RAM i have but how do i come to nkow of the bus speed(i am really bad at hardware so excuse me if this is not the way to going around buying RAM or if this info can be collected rather trivially).
i would really appreciate some assistance.

TheOther1 · 01-16-2004, 01:29 PM

I would think the easiest way would be checking a memory supplier website. Most have a memory finder where you select, make, model and it will tell you what ram you use. From there, you should be able to get the speed.

whansard · 01-16-2004, 01:31 PM

the only real way to tell what you've got is to look on the individual chips.
there may be a sticker on the dimm that tells. ram is sort of like speed
rated radials. speed rated 135mph radials doesn't mean you can only
drive the car at 135. same thing with ram.

rmanocha · 01-16-2004, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by whansard
the only real way to tell what you've got is to look on the individual chips.
there may be a sticker on the dimm that tells. ram is sort of like speed
rated radials. speed rated 135mph radials doesn't mean you can only
drive the car at 135. same thing with ram.

so u mean i can buy a RAM at any bus speed and have it work with my present RAM?
'cause the last time i went to a vendor....i was in the Netherlands then and asked him to give me a PC800 RAM he asked me for the bus speed and i was totally zapped since i had no idea.
thanks for all the help

MartinN · 01-16-2004, 05:19 PM

Hi!

What cpu and what chipset? Let us know the results of
cat /proc/cpuinfo
and
cat /proc/pci

Regards
Martin

whansard · 01-16-2004, 05:23 PM

the new ram needs to be at least as fast or faster.

and you're talking about rambus ram i think. there are some windows
programs that tell the bus speed, and you might can look in your cmos
setup to see what the bus speed is.

they asked you the bus speed to make sure the ram was fast enough.

some p4 machines only have 2 ram slots, and you have to dump what
you have to put in more. you could have rambus or sdram if it's a dell.

look the model number up on the dell website, and see what kind of
ram the machine needs.

witeshark · 01-16-2004, 10:55 PM

When in doubt google it! But all the specs you could possibly need surely can be found at the http://www.dell.com That is how I got the specs for my old HP