[BTP]

I am going to buy some RAM for my new 14" iBook. I am getting a 256 or a 512. When looking into this, I found the best price on a 512 at Crucial, but it is 3-3-3, not the 2-2-2 I have found everywhere else.

I know was the numbers mean, but not what they will mean in real life to me. It's not that much more to get 222, but since buying from Crucial will not be taxed and they ship for free, the total cost is $167.xx. Now if I go to the next vendors up in price, they sell the 222 for $179, plus tax (8%) and shipping.

I don't want to waste money, so can anyone enlighten me?

[Eug]

A simple way to calculate it is PCxxx at CAS 3-3-3 = 1000/ns.
Thus PC133 CAS 3-3-3 RAM is 7.5 ns.
To get PC100 at CAS 3-3-3 you need only 10 ns RAM.
For the CAS 2-2-2 PC100 RAM out there it's somewhere in between at 8 ns.
Note that 8 ns RAM is also PC125 CAS 3-3-3.

The Crucial.com stuff is 7.5 ns PC133 3-3-3, whereas most of the advertised 2-2-2 stuff is actually slower 8 ns PC100. CAS 2-2-2 PC133 would use expensive 7 ns chips.

ie. In this particular case, Crucial's 3-3-3 stuff is BETTER than other people's 2-2-2 stuff. Mind you there won't be any difference in performance, because the iBook won't run at the maximum speeds the Crucial memory is capable of.

I have a Crucial 512 MB in my iBook. The only reason I bought a 7.5 ns stick was in case I want to sell the memory later. PC laptops sometimes run at 133 MHz FSB, and thus the PC100 CAS 2-2-2 memory module would not be in spec.

[ 02-14-2002: Message edited by: Eug ]

[BTP]

Thanks! That was clear anc concise.

"Eug" the man!