PC800 or PC133, Possibly Dually

I have an Asus P3C-D(see sig) and I have 128mb of RAM spread over two sticks. I'm hard on money and I need a lot more RAM. Should I just go for the Rambus, or should I get the PC133, I can easily afford much more PC133 than Rambus...but if I went dual which I'm planning I'm araid that PC133 won't be able to do it. Suggestions?

I presume you are talking about using the PC-133 SDRAM with the riser card? If so, DON'T DO IT! The riser card is documented to not work very well. You will lose a signficant amount of performance.

Unfortunately, two 64 MB sticks are not much use with two available RIMM slots. You are best off getting two 256 MB PC800 sticks. Some say you can run RIMM in all three slots but I doubt it.

If they are 16-bit RIMMs, you need to install them in pairs.

I have a friend that has an old i820VC-based RDRAM motherboard for P3's that utilized RDRAM. He had the SDRAM Translator Hub riser card installed with Corsair SDRAM modules (256 MB low-density) and they worked fine without any data corruption. Performance was impeeded slightly, due to the signal translation from RDRAM to SDRAM and back again, but it could hold you over for the time being until you can score some cheap PC800 RDRAM sticks.

However, YMMV.

Used PC600 or PC800 RDRAM (256 MB pairs) usually go pretty cheaply on E-Bay or on forums all around the internet. I picked up a pair of 128 MB PC800 modules for $30 USD, which was a heck of a steal.

Side Note: You can mix ECC/NonECC RIMM modules, right (they will just all be detected as NonECC), right?

I'm not sure about your question. If I buy more ram it wouild be a stick of 256mb Pc800. You can run it in single with a special little card that I have.

so it looks like I'll stick with Rambus, thanks.