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There is only one way to find out, and this way is none other than a soldering iron to remove all chips from the backside of the PCB. Please don't try this at home, taking off the chips from a DIMM is an irreversible process, at least with home equipment. In addition, there is always the chance of frying the entire DIMM which, at a $300 value would be a painful experience. In any event, this is what the naked PCB looked like (pretty clean job). It is certainly cheaper to buy the DIMM in its present form than to try and modify a much more expensive module (which also voids the warranty).

LC does not assume any responsibility for any, whatsoever modifications of any DIMMs!

Mushkin Rev.2 256 MB DIMM with the chips removed from the back of the PCB. In this case the back side is easily identified by the Mushkin Enhanced logo in the lower left corner

Closeup of the corner outlined in red (rotated 90 ^o)

The result of this amputation was, at first, a huge relief, the DIMM was still functional and reported the correct density of 128 MB (single sided now). The second result surpassed all expectations since the DIMM now runs flawlessly at 166 MHz and 2:2:2 settings.

Luckily, Bill Mushkin is a guy with a very fast reaction time and it took only two weeks to follow the suggestions and add the single sided 128 MB DIMM to his repertoire, now called the Rev. 3 DIMM which is now available in quantity. All Rev.3 samples tested showed the same performance as the home-made sample, that is 166 MHz at 2:2:2 without breaking a sweat.

The new Mushkin Rev.3 DIMMs, single sided, featuring eight 16M x 8 (128Mbit) Infineon chips

Footnote

The main advantage of using a single DIMM as opposed to two DIMMs is that the clock signal to unused DIMM slots can be shut down in the BIOS by enabling PCI/DIMM CLK autodetect . Therefore, the clock signal does not need to be diluted to the individulal DIMM slots. In case several DIMMs are being used, this advantage is partially lost, depending on the number of DIMMs and slots available. Nonetheless, adding twice the amount of load in form of capacitors that make up the memory cells , will cause a hit with regard to the highest frequency possible which is why, in general, 256 MB DIMMs are slower than 128 MB DIMMs.

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