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Create Your Own Psuedo-RDRAM 115

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-overclock dept.
ucsimon writes: "For those of you who like to overclock, this is truly some hardcore stuff that shows how to convert SDRAM to RDRam. I value my ram too much to try, but I wonder if anyone out there has tried this yet. " Having the same sentimental attachment to my RAM that most people do, I haven't even attempted this either - anyone know if this works, even in theory? Post below. [Updated 28th April by timothy:] Well, this won't actually convert your SDRAM to RDRAM of course, but it will add to your heat-slurping overclocking abilities.
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Create Your Own Psuedo-RDRAM More

Create Your Own Psuedo-RDRAM

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  • Overclocking is for kids (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The idea of overclocking is pretty stupid really. I mean how many other expensive pieces of electronic equipement do you buy and then pump more current through? None, that's how many. So why do people feel the need to push their CPUs beyond their design parameters, risking data loss and burn out for a few MHz they'll never notice anyway.

    Personally I think it's all a bit juvenile, sort of like the "my car's better than your car" mentality prevalent amongst boy racers. It's all just basically a penis substitute, and I think that those that feel the need to brag about it need to grow up and realise it's not all about size (or speed in this case).

  • Re:Time == Money (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Time is only money if you have a job. For those of us that are jobless, you have to hack with what you have :)
  • This story is basically about the risk of RF interference when using ever-higher frequencies in a PC box.

    The only reference to RDRAM is in it because it's shielding not only acts as a cooling element, but also shields the signal lines from unwanted RF. The article then goes on to explain how to create an RF shield for your SDRAMs.

    This might be crucial if you get into the 150MHz range, where there could be a lot of RF signals nearby. Example: Ham radio stations operate in the 144-148MHz range, and your next door neighbour could be one of them. How would you like your system to crash each time he hits the mike??

  • In the Good Ole U S of A......

    The federal gov't wanted to institute a national speed limit in response to a percieved shortage of petroleum. Nowhere in the constitution are they given that power, but the supreme court allows them to blackmail the states into passing uniform codes (this should be of interest to all hackers, the shrink-wrap liscense laws are going to be implemented this way!). And so, conformance with the national speed limit was tied to block-grants of federal monies to state highway maintainance funds.

    The speed limit was 55mph for as far back as I can remember (hence, Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55"). American nature being what it is, most people felt it safe to go a bit faster, but with increased speed comes increased fines if caught. In some cases, the fine could DOUBLE if the driver went 15mph over the limit.

    Thus, a lot of people feel that 70 is the safest practical speed for an automobile on american highways.

    The current situation has changed. The blackmail laws are gone and some of the western states have completely repealed their speed limits (for highways, at least). Montana, iirc, is one of these.

    For myself, my top speed is 110, and I only do that on this one section of road that I know is safe and I never see any cops. :) Elsewhere I go with the flow of traffic.

    --Threed

    The Slashdot Sig Virus was foiled before it could spread.
  • Are you using Netscape 4.0+? If so... Go to View->Page Source Highlight link hit Control(Or Apple, if yer on a Mac)-C Hit Alt(or Apple, if yer on a Mac)-L Hit Control(or...ah, you get the picture)-V Hit Enter It took you longer to post the comment "Yes, but one that has a life." than it did for me to get the proper URL. How did I know this? Am I some geek with nothing better to do? Nope...aside from the view->Page source bit, this is pretty standard cut-and-paste procedure. Ugh. BTW, you're right, URLs should be checked...but it's easy enough to get past this.
  • Sorry, forgot to pick HTML mode: http://www.u-oplaz.com/oc/RAM_shield.htm [u-oplaz.com]

  • Umm.. What? (Score:5)

    by Defiler ( 1693 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:48AM (#1107466)
    This article has NOTHING to do with turning SDRAM into RDRAM.. All they did was put a copper shield on a stick of SDRAM, making it look similar to a real RDRAM module.
    Doesn't Slashdot occasionally GLANCE at the links that are submitted before posting them?
  • The author comments that 150 MHz is a "trouble region" because there's "more" EMI at that frequency. Bullshit. EMI just has to be present to be a problem, not at a particular frequency. 150MHz is only a problem because the RAM is designed for 133MHz.
  • Can't have one without the other. That is to say a changing electric field produces a changing magnetic field and vice versa. A faraday cage stops electric fields so it stops high frequency magnetic fields. (The fields will pass through on the order of a few wavelengths, so having the shield so close to the chip is not going to do much for you.)
    --

  • A while back I bought some PC100 ECC SDRAM from eBay and it showed up with a metal shield similar in appearance to the one this article suggests installing. Of course, it was aluminum instead of copper and appeared to have been soldered onto the dimm at the factory. I think the dimm was OEM'd for Compaq or Dell.

  • A truly intelligent post made by someone who OBVIOUSLY finished H.S. in the deep south. All you racist bastards are about being anonymous ( KKK AC )...wonder why that is? So you don't have to face the same ridicule from the people you constantly bad mouth?

  • Don't people have anything better to do than post crap about the people posting crap about slashdot moderation?
  • 3) Your SDRAM won't work at 150MHz because it's simply too fast for the junctions to switch, not because of EMI.

    Two things limit the maximum clock speed of a digital device: power dissipation and timing constraints.

    Typically, one limit will mask another. In the case of PC-class CPUs, it is generally power dissipation that limits the top speed (as most people realise, power dissipation is directly proportional to clock speed) which is why all these weird and wonderful cooling devices make overclocking possible.

    Eventually, you'll reach the second limit -- timing constraints. Timing constraints reflect the time taken for electrons to flow along a conductor and charge the capacitive loads they are connected to. They vary only a few percent with temperature, so no practical amount of cooling can overcome this limit.

    I have no idea which of these RAMs are limited by. My gut feeling is that they are limited by timing constraints rather than power dissipation (for various reasons, the main one being that RAMs don't really get hot.) Anyone know for certain?

  • Now that the link has been fixed on the Slashdot main page, all of these posts are irrelevant and "redundant". Shouldn't they all be modded down to -2 to spare everyone browsing from seeing them? After all, if you're going to punish people karma-wise for not forseeing that someone else would post the same thing a few seconds sooner, shouldn't anybody not forseeing that Slashdot would fix the link also have their karma stomped on?
  • Apparently you're putting

    &ltA HREF="

    in front of the URL and

    "&gt

    after it, but when you follow that with the text that you want to be the underlined clickable part, you aren't following *that* with

    &lt/A&gt

    so that everything that follows is treated as part of what you wanted to be the underlined, clickable part.

    Oh, one other thing. Apparently Slashdot doesn't like it if the A or the HREF or the other letters, like P, or I, or BR in between the less than and greater than signs are not uppercase.

  • I looked at the page source and the less than sign-frontslash-capital a-greater than sign wasn't there. That doesn't mean that you left it out, necessarily. Slashdot's being a little weird this morning. Don't know if it has anything to do with the beta server or not.

    The reason I wrote out the above instead of ampersand el tee and such is that *sometimes* Slashdot will show everything looking right in preview, but change your actual text where you use the ampersand to give the appearance of HTML *into* HTML, so that when you actually submit it comes out looking like a real link.

    The best time to avoid looking like an idiot in a post is when discussing imperfections in someone else's post.

  • that vw bug idea is the best one i have heard in here. shite. actually the idea of the box is great too... if the dimm slots are near the processor you could even ground the box right to the processor heat sink's EMI pads. or you could make the box out of copper mesh, or even chicken wire. of course this would only benefit you if you were running the mem at 150 MHz or above...
  • eeek , fix the url! :)
  • I don't overclock on the majority of my systems, but the premise behind it is sound, and those who do it are taking advantage of a little known fact about the CPU manufacturing process (whether they know it or not.) When intel (or any other manufacturer,) produces a batch of CPUs there are minute differences in each batch that can lead to a wide range of performance statistics. A select number of chips from each batch are tested, and the entire batch is rated based on the performance of those pulled parts. As a manufacturing process matures, the yield of faster CPUs also increases.

    Thus, a PIII 667EB is _exactly_ the same part as a PIII 500E, just running at a higher bust speed. In the case of the 500E, enough parts failed intel's performance tests to fail the entire batch. There are still parts in that batch that will run fine at 133Mhz fsb, though. Also, as the manufacturing process improves, more parts will pass the inspection tests, but lower speed parts will still be needed. Parts that passed the high-speed tests will be under marked simply to fill demand.

    This means a few things... one, a certain percentage of 500E parts will run at 667 mhz. Later in the cycle, this number will increase to near 100%. This also means that intel's costs for the 500E and 667EB are EXACTLY the same. Faster CPUs are more lucrative, so intel is pushed to improve their fab processes to increase yields of the more expensive parts.

    So the overclockers are really just taking advantage of Intel's product marking techniques. If they're kids, they're smart ones.

    Incidentally, I usually choose not to overclock my systems. My upgrade cycle usually leaves me purchasing a top-of-the-line system every few years. Since I buy near the beginning of a product's life cycle, overclocking can reduce the life expectancy of my CPUs. I'll only ever overclock my home systems, and only as I approach upgrade time. This is done as a way of squeezing the last bit of life out of a system right before I get rid of it.
  • Exactly. It was posted one minute before. Altho it almost definitely hadn't shown up yet on this person's page, it was already posted. Therefore it's redundant. Lots of people surf /. at +1 or +2. They have no use for multiple links to the same thing, and for that matter, how many of the rest of us need multiple links to the same page? I didn't think so.
  • I don't think so. The article goes on to talk about overclocking the bus to take advantage of the EMI shield, but the person who did the conversion didn't have fast enough hardware to allow it. But the obvious point was to make the RAM faster than SDRAM is sposed to go, which would mean making it ACT (not be == to) like RDRAM.
  • "Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) is a frequency modulation technique for EMI reduction. In the latest motherboards, the master clock generator chip does not maintain a constant frequency."

    As far as I know, what SSC does is jiggle the clock frequency a little, thus spreading EMI emissions out across a slightly wider range of frequencies. In other words, it gets around FCC EMI regulations without actually reducing the amount of energy radiated.

  • Not just an EMF Shield, also a heatsink. (Score:3)

    by Guppy ( 12314 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @04:35AM (#1107483)
    The metal plate in Rambus isn't just an EMF shield--it also functions as a heat sink, as not only do RDRAM modules run hot, the heat production is concentrated in a very small area. I'm guessing that any speed increase the mad overclockers saw in their SDRAM was due more to improved heat dissipation than anything else.

    "I'm not just an elder god, I'm cute too!"

  • Primary purpose of plate is as a "Heat Spreader" (Score:3)

    by Guppy ( 12314 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @04:56AM (#1107484)
    See Rambus's RIMM design guide [rambus.com], section 8.2.1 "Mechanical Components - Heatspreader/Cover Reference Design". More info can be found on Intel's developer site, on the RIMM Module Reference Design [intel.com] page, under the section "Production Heat Spreader Reference Design".

    Basically, RDRAM RIMMs give off a lot of heat, plus the heat is produced in a very small area. The aluminum covers are necessary to prevent hot spots. If you look at the figure 8-1 "Double-Sided RIMM Module Assembly-Exploded View", you'll see that the reference design calls for a thermal pad (Or thermal grease) between the heat spreader and the RDRAM chips.
  • I was curious as to whether there was really a need for an EMI shield on memory. Clearly, the author of the article thought it mattered (though it was funny that he could not get his system to 150Mhz anyway... so what was the point of it all?)

    Anyway, I went to google for some links.

    Here [ednmag.com] is a fairly general overview of EMI in computers. It talks about various strategies for dealing with it.

    Here [isdmag.com] is an article mostly about SDRAM, but which says the following: "Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) is a frequency modulation technique for EMI reduction. In the latest motherboards, the master clock generator chip does not maintain a constant frequency." Anyone know if that is true? I didn't know that...

    Finally, an article [intel.com] showing Intel is concerned about the problems of EMI in modern computers.

    All in all, interesting stuff (I love absurb overclocking articles!) but I would like to have found some evidence that shielding memory like they did has any real benefit.

  • Sigh (Score:1)

    by jhme ( 12580 )
    Slashdot is really getting low on standards... It seems to me that whoever accepted this submission didn't even read the page. Uncool, I say.

  • Stability (Score:1)

    by ja ( 14684 )
    The article is about making your overclocked memory more stable by shielding it. Not about changing the type as such ...

    Looks like it could work.

    mvh // Jens M Andreasen

  • Thanks for the link Hemos! (Score:5)

    by Skinka ( 15767 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @05:41AM (#1107488)
    This comes in really handy as I just converted my 16MHz i386 to 1.5GHz Willamette, which as we all know doesn't support SDRAM for now. Now if could just convert that 5.25" floppy drive to a DVD-RAM drive...

  • How not to convert SDRAM into RDRAM (Score:3)

    by scheme ( 19778 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @04:11AM (#1107489)

    The article doesn't go into converting SDRAM into RDRAM at all. It's about making an EMI shielding for your SDRAM chips. This doesn't make the SDRAM into RDRAM although it make look like it. It's sort of like taking a saturn and putting a porsche body on top of it and expecting it to perform like a porsche.

    RDRAM uses a 8 or 16 bit channel running at 300 to 400+ MHz with data being sent on the rising and falling edges of the clock. SDRAM runs at 100MHz on a 32bit bus that sends data on the rising edge only. Turning SDRAM into RDRAM would involve replacing the memory interface and control circuits on the SDRAM and changing the packing to fit in a RIMM. If you can do this, you'll probably do better to work as a chip designer for a semiconductor company and using the money you earn to buy some RDRAM.

  • Because CPUs are like cars. They are designed to go much faster than the speed limits, although with speed comes greater risk. Some people like to race on the freeway at midnight (dumb bastards), while some like to crank their CPU beyond the posted speed limit (which is much less dangerous :)

  • Not really... (Score:5)

    by toastyman ( 23954 ) <toasty@dragondata.com> on Thursday April 27, 2000 @05:10AM (#1107491) Homepage
    I know a few of these points have been brought up already, but let me summarize and add my own thoughts:

    1) The metal bracket on RIMMS isn't for EMI shielding, it's for heat. It's just like the heatsink on your CPU, which doesn't add to the EMI protection noticably.

    2) A 150MHz SDRAM dimm isn't RDRAM. Rambus uses an entirely different protocol, and anyway... 150Mhz SDRAM is probably faster than rambus.

    3) Your SDRAM won't work at 150MHz because it's simply too fast for the junctions to switch, not because of EMI. If you've got a serious EMI problem, you'll probably see it if you're overclocking or not.

    4) That design shown probably wouldn't fix an EMI problem, either. It'll most likely act as an antenna, worsening the problem.

    BUT... To whoever made that page.. Keep hacking. While this idea might not have worked, you may come up with a great supercooled DIMM refrigerator or something. Good luck. :)

  • I have had the same thing happen to me but with my home AV system. At any time of the day, in the space of a few seconds, a male voice, sounding like a CB transmission, will come through the speakers gradually becoming clear enough to make out a few words, then fade away. It's usually the same voice and even though it's VERY LOUD (almost painful) I can't make out the meaning of the message [I'm guessing aircraft tower]. I have medium grade, off-the-shelf stuff; large screen TV, tuner, VCR, CD, bunny ears and Sony satelite dish. The system is always on when I hear the voices -- but then, it's always on when I'm home -- the speaker cables are medium gage Monster Cables and the system is on a wire rack. I don't have a computer at home and the computer at work never expresses similar symptoms. I'm in Grand Rapids, MI, USA if that's a viable variable. Others have heard it in my house, but I haven't heard of this occurance from my friends with similar systems. I called DirecTV and they had no answers to explain this. Anyone know what's causing this or who I should ask?
    Muchas gracias.
  • I'm gonna write this off to the picking-up-radiostations-with-braces phenomena.
  • Likewise, the Soyo SY-6VBA 133 allows it, as well. Up to 155, actually. It also allows you to run your RAM slower than the rest of the system bus. As in, I've got a PIII 450 running at 600 on the 133fsb, but my ram is only at 100. So if I had a nasty-ass coppermine, I'd be able to punch it up to 155 and keep my ram at a gentle ~116.5Mhz The AGP and PCI are another story, tho. Dirk

  • Ideas (Score:1)

    by BoLean ( 41374 )
    Despite the obvious flaws with this story it actually has an interresting point. How many system errors are caused by EM interference? At the apartment I just moved out of someone nearby was broadcasting so strongly that sound would come out of my computer speakers even with the power turned off. Freaked me out the first time I heard it. Apparently the EM boradcast was inducing/oscillating current to the speaker or the power line going into the speaker. The computer alwas seemed more stable late at night and most-unstable from 4-11PM. Maybe a good solution would for someone to sell some inexpensive tape made from braided wire that could be applied to sensitive components. Also, does this also mean that Apple computers may be less stable since they have plactic cases? Interresting.

  • You live in GR? I grew up in Jenison but I've lived in Virginia since '89. What a small world. I used to really miss Studio28 but then AMC built a huge 24 screen theatre here with all stadium seating that really kicks but. Not a bad screen in the place. The area is pretty high-tech but Linux hasn't really been adopted yet. We havea small user group down in Virginia Beach and hopefully I'll start one up where I am within the next few months.

    On the EM thing I also have trouble sometimes when I cross a local bridge down here. Whatever AM or FM station I'm on I pick up some kind of voice for about 5 seconds. Wierd. Voices in my head maybe? The Naval Air Station is nearby and they could be the culprits.


  • Er... it appears that this page is about sheilding your SDRam. Is that all there to it?

  • I thought it was "colour the outside edge with a green marker" or "cool cd in freezer"?
    :)

  • This is moderated as Redundent and reduced down 1. Another post with the same information, now up to 3, was posted just 1 minute before.

    Don't moderators have anything better to do with their points rather than moderate down people who are trying to help?
  • >Lots of people surf /. at +1 or +2. They have no use for multiple links to the same thing,

    If they surf at +1 they are getting alot worst stuff than redundant/informative posts. That should be the least of their conserns.

    >how many of the rest of us need multiple links to the same page? I didn't think so.

    Oh please, and no slashdot before ever had two people posting the exact same information/opinion ever before?

    My point is that this is BARELY redundant, the difference between a +5 and a -1 is one minute. Tell me its not a crappy moderation system.
  • The new Abit(every OC'er's favorite company) VT6X4 has a FSB of 150 mhz (1/4 PCI bus speed).
  • "So why do people feel the need to push their CPUs beyond their design parameters, risking data loss and burn out for a few MHz they'll never notice anyway."

    What design parameters are you talking about? You're under the wrong impression if you believe a PIII 600 is a different chip than a PIII 850. They are, in fact the same chip, it's just that the 850 has probably passed more of Intel's QA. The argument for overclocking is that they're willing to bet Intel's standards are too strict (Intel does have to guarantee they chip will run at least at the advertised speed), and with proper cooling or whatever voodoo waving they do they can get their chip to run faster. And it is, in fact, a bet; overclockers void their warranty doing so.

    While you may think this sort of thing is for kids, another argument has more merit - they money they save from buying a higher-rated chip can be used to buy a newer chip a year two down the line when it's time to upgrade (supposing their overclocked chip life's shorter). Naturally, I suppose they'll overclock those chips as well.
  • FFS, i've seen some bullshit on Slashdot, but this takes the cake.

    'Turn your SD-RAM into RD-RAM??'

    I used to respect slashdot, most everything on it was both interesting and factual.

    Lately, its just infantile ranting and, in this case, lies.

    Screw you, Hemos

    -ikekrull.

  • That's right. If Intel say you have to pay $200 more for a piece of silicon that has "600" stamped on it, then that's the price of running at 600MHz. Running a 300MHz Celeron that fast is STEALING! Honestly, it's as bad as those people that use teabags twice.
  • > Athlon 500: $146

    Bought one last week for $100. Athlon 500MHz is the bargain of the year!

  • "The best material to shielding EMI is to use copper coated iron sheet"
    What is the guy on?
    If he is trying to create a kind of Faraday cage then choose good conductors like Oxygen Free High Conductivity (OFHC) Copper. Even better use some superconducting material if you really feel like pushing the boat out.
  • Agreed...read the TITLE tag...
  • I typically drive 95 mph when the traffic will allow it (I don't drive during rush hour). I live in Silicon valley and have found that fortunately there are never cops along 880 and 237. Most people drive about 70, which I find strange.

  • Well, don't they make toasters now with wider slots? I'd call that an improvement...Also, there is that company that is making the iToaster...(but that isn't really a toaster is it?) As for overclocking being for kids: With CPU's getting faster all the time, and Money$oft bloating their code in such a way as to make the computer appear to be running at the same speed, I think its important to stay just a bit ahead of the M$ curve. At least you feel like CPU's are making progress then, instead of just keeping up.

    As for making SDRAM into RDRAM, would this mean that I could run SDRAM on a mobo that expected RDRAM? If so, then this is really a GREAT idea, since that RDRAM crap is just outrageously expensive for some reason.
  • (Post delayed a week due to off-topic-ness)

    First, the putz you responded to is a loser who lacks the skill to initiate a proper troll, and thus resorted to writing an off-color testament to his own lack of creativity. You fed him anyway. Bad smkndrkn!

    Anyway most of the serious racists in this country are in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Midwest, where minorities *really are* a minority. Seattle is the worst city for minorities in the country, according to the NAACP (you can find the study somewhere in their vast labyrinthine web page, if you really want to). After Seattle comes Portland, Or., and third is Indianapolis, IN. It also really sucks to be Asian in Detroit. You're right about the KKK though; they are a bunch of ac's who should be moderated down immediately. With shotguns.

    The probable reason that you think that the South is so bad is because of incredibly dishonest journalism and a few random outbreaks of stupidity perpetrated by isolated individuals (think alabama churches, s. carolina confederate flag, etc.) I used to think the same thing, until I moved to Nashville and actually saw what people are like here; my minority friends all have a deep-seated hatred for the south, and I think it is mostly unwarranted. There are stupid people here, like anywhere else in this country, and a lot of them drive pickup trucks, but violent crime committed with racist intent is relatively low as far as I have seen or heard. IMHO hating southerners because they are from the south is just as bigoted as hating a minority because of his race or creed. Hate any individual racist bastard you want to- mock him for his bigotry and for his obvious lack of education and pity him for his low self esteem - but don't lump them into a group with all of their neighbors, because most people just want to live their lives in peace.

    I basically lost my (thai) fiance due to a similar prejudice; she refused to move here from denver because she was afraid of rednecks. So I am quite bitter about this particular kind of misconception. If this is a response to a second order troll, keep that in mind as you gloat...

    Rev Neh
  • I think not ... it shows how to add a foil EMI shield to SDRAM so it LOOKS like RDRAM ....
  • This is because each RDRAM accesses go to a single chip on a DIMM while an SDRAM access goes to all the chips on a DIMM - worst case for an SDRAM spreads the generated heat load across all the chips, on an RDRAM one chip gets REALLY hot .... you have to spread that heat out to help it disipate.

    This is the worst case behaviour of course - normal behaviour of the two is roughly random accesses and is probably about the same.

    So probably adding a heat sink is not all that usefull for your SDRAMs unless you know you have a problem - and then more airflow in the case is probably a better bet.

    As for an EMI shield? unless your neighbors (or spouse) are complaining about their TV reception what's the point

  • I don't know a lot about the topic, but I used to work for a radio guy (in the Army) and from what I gathered in that time, antennae work -specifically- by NOT being grounded. I imagine that this would not add, and might even reduce, EMI.

    That is one hell of a sentence.


    Slashdot cries out for open standards, then breaks them [w3.org].
  • Damnit Jim, I'm a Doctor not a Taiwanese factory worker!

  • I'm only into overclocking if it makes my system FASTER...

    --
  • Sorry for being off-topic, but I'm just wondering..?
    70 is fast for you? 70 x 1.6 = 112 km/h. That is 2 km/h more than the legal speed limit on freeways here in Denmark. This is considered slow. Most people driving on the freeway is doing 130-140 km/h (~85-90 mph).

    Just wondering..
  • This has to be the most misleading slashdot story yet.

    The web page in question tells you how to bend some copper and attach it to your SDRAM so that yes, it looks a little bit like an RDRAM if you squint a bit and the light is not so good.

    Forget the RDRAM .vs. SDRAM debates. This is a non-story. It just doesn't deliver, even if you did want to do the conversion.

    Is there anyway to down-moderate the base article off the front page?

  • This is because most other pieces of equipment are more or less at thier technological peak. If my toaster took 15 min to make a piece of toast, I'd consider doing something to make it toast faster. Make it hotter or whatever. But as it is, My toast is ready by the time I've poured my OJ and gotten out my peanut-butter. (granted I toast on "light" but still.)

    This isn't true with computers. Every 6 months news and faster computers hit the market. When was the last time a better toaster hit the market?
  • RAMBUS RAM also is not direct access, it uses a protocol based communication (as said on tomshardware) that works serially between RDRAM modules. This is why there is such a huge "adaptor" for i820 and i840 motherboards to enable them to use DRAM. To make DRAM in RDRAM, all components nessesairy to receive, interpreate, and act on the protocol commands would need to be added

    Besides, I think if butting copper around a PC133 DIMM was all it'd took, Intel would have come up with something easier that the bus translation adaptor thing for DRAM in their chipsets.

    --It's amazing what they can do with copper these days
  • Yeah, I usally hit the /. "preview" then hit the "back" button instead of resubmitting from the preview.

    -rt-
  • So we are all geeks, right? I end my computer modifications when the soldering iron, tin snips, or a multitester comes out.. call me a coward, but id like the thing to turn on later.

    A friend of mine replaced his bios battery with a commerical one from a store.. personally, i was a tad afriad. It worked.. kinda

    Whats the moral of the story? Im glad that someone has figured out how to do all of these neat things.. however, im also glad its not me.

    --jay
  • Not quite entirely true.

    Whilst you are right when you say
    that more than tin-foil is required
    to block radiation (working on the
    design Radiation Tolerant chip right
    now so I know what I'm talking about),
    it WILL stop or at least dramatically
    reduce magnetic interference.

    You know, Faraday's cage...

    J.

  • When you go to moderate a post as "Redundant" notice that all of us who posted a similar link did so in the first 10-12 posts. This means (let me spell this out for you) that we all submitted this at the same time. Sure it's redundant. But not intentionally so. Don't waste your moderator points on this.

    Redundancy is for posts like "Me too!" Have you actually READ the moderator guidelines?

  • Now I am beginning to get sucked into the Slashdot Sucks meme. The link is broken because you did not complete the "a href" part of the tag.

    Can someone post the link so that I can know what I am supposed to posting about?

    BTW, for my QA services, that will be $500. PayPal me at mindstorm@nospam.mediaone.net.


    If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
  • Yes, but one that has a life.


    If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
  • d00d, Dreamweaver is more k-rad l33t ;-)


    If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
  • Intersting hack. But I wonder if it's worth all the effort and sliced, bloddy fingers. It just seems you're putting too much effort in something that you won't get much back from.

    Also there is one quesiton: stability? What happens when the homebrewed shield falls off?

    RAMBUS prices will go down. For the rest of us, we will wait for that event.


    If design is not Bauhaus, it is Baroque.
  • I wonder if you could take the n64 RDRAM chip out and rewire it to work it an x86 RDRAM.

    And what's this i hear about the Athlons not having RDRAM? The preview on cpu-central said it would like 6 months ago...

  • What exactly are the advantages in RDRAM that make this excercise worth it? I thought ram was already extremely fast with times of less than 2ns already. What am I missing?

    Well, more speed is always good with RAM. RDRAM however, is a mixed blessing. The maximum transfer rates are great, but the latency is somtimes worse than with SDRAM, and it's not constant.

    How could it benefit? Space exploration in the presence of stray electromagnetic fields? Nope, non-crashing computer in the presence of a cel phone. Of course, the case of the computer should already take care of that.

  • t's all just basically a penis substitute,

    It's not the number of MHz that counts, it's what you do with them...

  • "we" meaning flame-slinging, intolerant idiots who can't count and value karma scores over content?

    I don't think I mind pissing "you" off...

  • I think that attempting this would almost always be doomed to fail, since I don't think any reasonable motherboard would allow such a high FSB, and if it did, you'd get a shitload of trouble from stuff like the PCI bus being linked to the FSB and PCI devices not liking a higher clock...

  • Working Link (Score:5)

    by -brazil- ( 111867 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:38AM (#1107533) Homepage
    Here [u-oplaz.com] is the working link...

  • How did THIS get posted??? (Score:5)

    by -brazil- ( 111867 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:42AM (#1107534) Homepage
    The poster apparently has no clue whatsoever. The article is NOT about turning SDRAM into RDRAM, which is utterly impossible since the technologies are radically different.

    This article merely tells you to make an SDRAM module look like and RDRAM by giving it a shield agains electromagnetic emissions. This might have some benefit in very rare cases, but realistically, it's totally pointless.

  • Hello.
    I don't know why all you have such a liking for facts, and reality and such. I just wanted to get a posting on the main page, and I found the page amusing because it did indeed have potential to be misleading. I was hoping that a news outlet would pick it up, and talk about overclocking alchemy and so on. and then Intel would freak out and start suing people, and then Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg would get involved...and somewhere along the line I would become a nerd martyr....ummm. yeah. so there.

    -dennis the kid
  • Well the speed limit in montana is back. You know why? Its because
    #1 people don't know how to drive anymore,
    #2 cars aren't built as well anymore,
    #3 people complained that having people going fast was scarey.
    People these days yeesh! Wait wasn't this thread supposed to be about this cute copper foil you can glue to your ram so you can be l33t? I think there might be some benifit from dissipating heat if there is a heat problem and if there is and EMI problem it might be possible that it shields that but in the end it seems this dude just had some killer ram chips that he was able to overclock really well.
  • Sometimes, it's not a matter of being cheap, it's a matter of not having enough money to buy the performance you want/need/crave/persue-with-reckless-abandon. I picked up my P3-450MHz for $325 (it was at the middle of last summer) and it runs happily at ~538MHz without the adition of extra hardware. Now when you consider that a REAL P3-550 would have cost me more than a hundred dollars MORE than my OC'd P3-538, and that (at the time) that $100 didn't exist in my money-to-burn account...

    -Ma Tin Yuan
    Who is glad that, three weeks later, he spent that hundred bucks he saved on buying CAS-2 PC-133 RAM instead of CAS-3 PC-100. He also OC's his TNT2-Ultra, and is considering OC'ing his modem to see if he can get below 300 ping with it...
  • I'd like to take this oppertunity to apologize for choosing a P3 over a celeron, but i do a lot of number crunching wherein the psudeo-parallel-processing provided SSE actually makes a difference, and i'm not REALLY going to OC my modem, I'll just go ahead and buy a whole new Magical-Pixie-Modem...
    -Ma Tin Yuan
    "If I overclock my SoundCard, will MP3's play back too fast?"
  • Not Kids, Morons. In some cases, there is a difference. I'm 17 and wouldn't peak 70* on the freeway OR fry my CPU with overclocking.

    * Yes, in Michigan this is legal.

  • Bullshit! (Score:3)

    by ibpooks ( 127372 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:53AM (#1107540) Homepage
    A metal shield over the chip will NOT reduce magnetic or radiation effects. The shield will simply SCATTER magnetic interference, NOT block it. RDRAM chips are engineered to protect against interference which encompases much more than tin foil. Personally, I prefer paying for RDRAM chips that actually do protect against interference rather than hacking a cheap DIMM chip and randomly scatter magnetic anomolies throughout my system RAM.
  • It's clear to me (a seasoned electrical engineer with 15 years of RF/EMC experience) that this author has too much time on his hands and is now about to waste the reader's time too. If the concern is EMI getting into the RAM chip (and slowing it down or screwing it up), then yes, a bit of a shield might do something (however minor). But, don't forget that these shields work both ways! If the traces on the boards and/or the IC leadframes themselves are radiating due to changing logic states (quickly!), then how do you think they will react to having that signal travel the short distance to the shield, and then being reflected back to the source? Adding signals together with a short time delay (travel time to the shield and back) is always messy and sometimes creates signal cancelation--which is not good!. Given the distance between the sources and the receptors, I'd say this chap is chasing the wrong idea. If he's worried about signals getting into his RAM and slowing it down, then better to have a good metal case on his unit and--if he's really concerned about signal reflections--perhaps adding a little carbon based RF absorber lining the inside of the case. I for one, don't want to start reflecting signals from my computer parts directly back into them by putting close spaced shields around the individual parts. The RAM boards were not designed with this in mind and most certainly have not been tested to operate in this fashion. So play all you want with your individual computer system, but please educate yourself before advising others that "This is a good thing. Try it." From my perspective, you're doing more damage than good to this community.
  • I have *never* seen a cpu be burned out from overclocking. Thats why most people use celerons, they are cheap and plentiful. Do you expect your current computer to still be around in a few years? Its not just a few more Mhz either. Since you are pushing the FSB beyond 100Mhz it starts getting faster than a pII. My dual celeron 333's have been running at a solid 500Mhz since september of last year. 167Mhz is a definite improvement. I can run them comfortably at 520 or even 530, but kernel compiles usually fail. My best compile time is 2:11 seconds.
  • This is pretty interesting, but who has the time for this. I don't make a hell of a lot of money, but the price difference in the two types of memory isn't worth the amount of time it would take me to do this. I'd rather just go out and buy the RDRAM in the first place.

    kwsNI
  • The real article is http://www.u-oplaz.com/oc/RAM_shield.htm [u-oplaz.com]

    kwsNI

  • I agree about the voodoo. This is offtopic I know, but what I don't understand is why audiophiles go to such extremes as they do without worrying about the effects of static discharge on their expensive electronics. I don't have a business selling gold plated wriststraps and living room sized oxygen free rubber anti-static mats, but I'd get a real sense of satisfaction if I could persuade even one audiophile to take me seriously.

  • I just took another look at the article. The copper sheet is earthed via a wire and a crocodile clip. If anyone here did an electronics course, remember how you never got a square picture of a square wave on the oscilloscope screen until you used the right earthing attachment and calibrated the probe tip? Anything that the copper shield picks up flows back to the case via the inductance of the cable and the mechanical (not soldered) crocodile clip connection, which will ring like crazy at high frequencies.

    At least try soldering the copper to all of the SIMM ground pins to get a good earth. Then I would ask if all that extra capacitance isn't loading down the signal traces and slowing down your system.

    The more I think about this, it is bull. I do know for sure that getting earthing and shielding to work is as much an art as a science, but the test of science is whether or not this makes a measurable improvement.

  • They sell special *thin* flexible tape used in RF shielded screen rooms. Basiclly like copper-foil tape. Wouldn't it just be easier to tape your RAM with that stuff and use an ag-clip for the gnd? The tape is available as non-conductive on the back(sticky) side.

  • Why RDRAM is good for consoles but bad for PCs (Score:3)

    by NaughtyEddie ( 140998 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @08:04AM (#1107548)
    The reason consoles use RDRAM is because the price/performance ratio is great. For consoles.

    See, RDRAM has large latency (approx. 28 cycles @ 400MHz for a random access = 70ns) but for sequential accesses it spews the data out very very fast indeed (a 16-bit-channel RDRAM setup at 400MHz can spew out 16 bytes in 4 cycles = 10ns; a 32-bit-channel dual-chip setup - only found in consoles - can double this to 32 bytes in 10ns).

    This is great for consoles, where you have lots of DMA going concurrently with semi-random CPU cacheline refills. For this application, RDRAM is much, much cheaper than the alternative (which would be 128-bit-wide, 100MHz synchronous RAM of some flavor). RDRAM also wins hands down on simplicity of system design since its data bus is only 16 bits, or 32 bits in dual-chip setups, plus only 8 more bits for addressing. It provides superb theoretical bandwidth, which can be approached quite closely in a well-designed console (er ... can someone build a well-designed console for me? ;)

    However, for PCs, the case is much less clear cut. DMA seems to be far less important these days, and you certainly won't see half a dozen concurrent DMA channels going over a 200MHz FSB anytime soon. Even building a 200MHz FSB would be practically impossible in a modular system such as the desktop PC. Consoles are so non-modular, the current crop are internally dense as hell with heatsinks and EMI shielding, and the primary internal busses are no more than half an inch long.

    To make RDRAM work great with a desktop PC would take, in my estimation, far, far better RDRAM controllers than are currently available, and integrated much more tightly with the CPU, and communicating over a synchronous bus of at least 128 bits.

    RDRAM definitely wins on bandwidth, but its latency is so atrocious that you need a good prediction of what data is needed next ... easy to do on a dozen DMA channels but when the primary channel is the CPU it's near-impossible.

    In summary, RDRAM is too application-specific to be suitable for desktop PCs, and the controllers are not yet mature enough to get anything like full speed from it in Real World PC applications.

    Not to mention the fact that it's proprietary, so it intrinsically costs more to manufacture than other RAM designs.

  • This is why I don't put Slashdot with my bookmarks for News. How many times has faulty or unverified info been past along to us? If I am really busy I only browse headlines, something like this would catch quite a few "browsers" offguard. Maybe /.ers would do a service by moderating news stories.

  • Agreed...read the TITLE tag...

    Correct, it does say "Make your own RDRAM". This is very misleading, however, I think everyone has to look a bit below that, where it states that the article is a translation. I think everyone here who has ever used Babblefish knows what effects translations can do, even if the translator is human.

  • I hate to break it to these guys, but the frequency does not have much to do with the ammount of RF that is being emmitted from the chips. In order to emit RF, you must have an antennae. That is why the traces from the processor->north bridge->memory are so short (aside from latency). If an antennae is not tuned, or near a tune, it will not radiate much. Putting the shielding on the memory makes it look nice. The RF, if any, would be jumping off of the traces, not the memory. The other wires/traces would be picking up the RF, not the memory (you need antennae's to recieve too!) This is called crosstalk and that is why there are groundplanes between many layers of various boards.

    An week in the laboratory will save an hour in the library!

  • Sounds like voodoo to me (Score:3)

    by Tom73 ( 149260 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:55AM (#1107552) Homepage
    This reminds me of high end audio freaks who paint the outsides of their CDs to prevent environmental light disturbing the laser, or fill their Amps with acrylic so the electrons in the circuits wont be affected by vibrations.
  • So if I buy an Athlon 500 and find out it runs 750 w/ no problems, I should keep it at 500?

    That is stupid. I will overclock it to 750. Chips are coming off of the lines running at much greater speeds than the manufacturers want us to realize. The yields are just too damned good to ignore.

    btw, this is from Sharky Extreme's CPU price guide:
    Athlon 750: $311
    Athlon 500: $146

    If you cannot see wthat overclocking is a viable alternative to spending too much money, by all means don't do it. For the rest of us who can barely afford the 500, it is worth a shot to at least try 750.
  • But obviously not a brain. If you'll sort by date and take a look at the oldest posts, you'll notice that there happens to be about 50 kajillion poeople posting the link so they too can get moderated -1 redundant... Maybe I should try it.. Ok moderators, here we go, I'm posting the link! AHH! [u-oplaz.com] Let's hear it for the moderators folks!

    (I want to see at least ONE +1 Funny out of this if I get mod'd down... Come on, have a heart.)

  • Guess there must have been a number-of-people-posting-the-fixed-link-getting-+1 -informative cutoff today. Did you guys see that. Fscking hillarious.. You see all these +1 informative's of guys all posting the same link, and then BAM... Anyone who accidentally posted the link not realizing that someone else already had. -1 Redundent. Gotta love that.

    Let's hear it for moderation folks! (And for those of you who have itching fingers to mark this down as a troll or something, give it up. It's a serious post. Don't waste your points, find something actually worth reading somewhere and bring it to the top. If I was trolling I would not be using my name, as thats just stupid.)

  • Can someone post the link so that I can know what I am supposed to posting about?

    View page source. You are a geek, aren't you?

  • It looks like it would be a fairly straightforward project. If you have the skill to bend up a bit of copper and make sure it doesn't touch anything important, that's all there is to it. Basically the whole point of the project is to just shield the chip from EMI. You don't modify the chip or anything, just form a piece of copper and slip it over. If I were into OC'ing or owned a clear case (no shielding) I would jump right on this project.
    --
    An armed society is a polite society
  • Check out this test sharky did, were talking VERY minor speed increases. in the actuall apps(err, games :o)
    Check out the mem. specific stuff here, not to worry. This link works :o) [sharkyextreme.com]

    Why does my links act(i would have said something else, but i hurts my karma!!) up? the html is correct, THANK YOU.. and the complete mb review, here [sharkyextreme.com]

    Its interesting stuff, i know it saved me from running out getting a i820 based motherboard.

  • UHHH, NO (Score:4)

    by EK-Hack ( 178388 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:50AM (#1107569) Homepage
    That page was about reducing EMI in your ram in case you are overclocking your system, not converting SDRAM to RAMBUS. They just mention in the beginning why RAMBUS has the shielding.

    EK-Hack

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