LOSTCIRCUITS |
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Corsair-Micron PC133 DIMMs
Quality and Performance
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(Review by bighammer and MS, June 26, 1999)
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With CPUs of basically all major manufacturers hitting or exceeding the half Gigahertz barrier, it has become more and more obvious that one of the limiting bottlenecks in the chain of command is the data transfer between the main memory or system RAM and the processing units. The reason why the plural is used in the above statement is that even the most basic PC nowadays needs to utilize the additional power of e.g. the graphics processor in addition to the central processing unit. In the past, the former was confined to the resources of the local frame buffer or on-board video memory. However, through the implementation of the advanced graphics port (AGP) and its inherent features of direct memory access (DMA) and direct memory execution (DiME), the system RAM has acquired a new role. That is, it has to accomplish not only the data feed to the CPU but, in addition, has become an integrated part in graphics processing.
Of course, this vital "multi tasking" function of the system RAM requires a functional data transfer bus superior to the PCI specifications. At present, with the AGPx2 standard, this function can only marginally be accomplished but a few weeks from now, we will be looking at fully operational AGP x 4 compliant chipsets which will open a whole new dimension for graphics processing. Unfortunately, if we were to adhere to the current PC 100 specifications, the bottleneck would merely be shifted from the AGP interface to the main memory.
In other words, the key feature necessary to improve any computer’s performance is memory throughput and the, at least theoretically, easiest way to increase it is to speed up the system bus. However, with increasing bus speed, the demands on the memory performance increase in a non-linear way. This is caused by certain parameters within the data transfer sequence that do not depend on the memory itself but rather on the chipset, that is, the mainboard.
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