Review: Kingston ValueRAM

David Dorn has the unenviable task of reviewing a 512MB PC133 DIMM

How on earth can you review a DIMM? The easy answer is, really, you can't. You can install it into your PC and run with it, but there's not really a way to compare it in any meaningful way with any other DIMM of like capacity and speed.

Since PC133 DIMMs are pretty much what they say on the tin, the spec of the Kingston ValueRAM 512MB CL3 DIMM that is currently remembering things inside my PC is fairly straightforward to fathom. As is the way of these things, they either work, or they don't work - it's pretty much an on and off situation - unless you're talking ECC RAM, which is very different kettle of haddock, and which your motherboard needs to be set up to accept.

No, this here half a gig stick looks much like any other half a gig stick, and, thus far, it works. Review over? No, not quite - it's actually a great excuse to let you know what differences a bit of extra RAM can make.

Which OS?

Now, here we've got to make some distinctions between the various different operating systems that you may be using. Let's start with DOS and Windows 3.11. If you're thinking about bunging a gigabyte of RAM at this oldster, don't bother. It won't work.

Next up is Windows 95/98/Me. There's a limit here of 512MB. Beyond that, Windows Me, particularly, will lock up, while 95 will simply not make much use of it.

Windows NT/2000/XP, on the other hand, loves RAM - the more the merrier. A gigabyte is no problem for these babies - they'll lap it up, and use it all, and to great effect - as will the 95/98/Me versions, to some degree - let me explain.

It's a fact that some applications you may run are very memory hungry. Bitmap editors, particularly, can be exceedingly heavy on RAM usage, especially if you're fiddling with two and three megapixel digicam images - and the more undo levels you have enabled in your software, the worse it can get.

On a 64MB system, then, even the operating system is looking to page some of what should be running in RAM out to hard disk.

At 128MB, all of the non-NT Windows systems will be happily running entirely in RAM, but opening an application could well force disk paging to start. That has the unfortunate by-product of slowing your system down.

At 256 MB, Windows XP is entirely contained in RAM, with around 32MB free for other programs - so opening up, say, Photoshop is asking for hard disk paging, which slows things down again.

At 384MB, though, things start to look up a bit. Photoshop will be contained in RAM, and you'll see some hard disk activity when you load a largish bitmap to edit - you may also see some slower screen re-draws as bits of the image a re retrieved from disk.

At 512MB things are pretty smooth. You can have a few windows open in all the operating systems that can handle 512MB, and, as long as you're not trying to edit a 5 megapixel 32 bit TIFF file at the same time, things will be pretty much plain sailing. Working with normal quantities of non-too-heavy RAM using programs open, your PC will probably be running as fast as it's ever going to go.

Beyond 512MB, it's really a matter of how big a picture you can edit, how quickly you can render video footage from your digital video camera (much quicker in RAM than from disk) and how quickly really memory hungry applications manage their on-screen data.

So, the basic rule is, the more the merrier, depending on which OS you're using. Now, I'll own up. I use Windows XP, and I've got the full Gigabyte of RAM in the machine - 2x256 DIMMS and the new Kingston 512MB DIMM.

In order to confirm things, I've been trying to get some paging happening with some very hungry programs and very, very large images. Here's the thing - I have yet to see the disk light light up, and I cannot detect any slow-down in any software.

As a further experiment, I rigged a 1GHz PIII with a Gigabyte of RAM (the very same RAM, actually) and timed a few things against my P4 1.7GHz with 128MB in it. The PIII won - it performed just as quickly as the P4. Now, before anyone asks about timed down to the millisecond benchmark results, this was a subjective test - in other words, how the machine felt to me - and more RAM certainly made the difference.

So, there you have it. I can't fault the Kingston stick - it does exactly what it says on the tin, it's packed nicely, and it's very, very nice to have in your machine. I think I want another two so that I can fill all the slots on my motherboard and max it out, and, at the same time, take the 1GHz machine up to the full Gig. You can't beat having plenty of RAM!

 

David Dorn