PC150 for real?

[A2500cc]

I know it's DDR this and DDR that but does or did 168 pin SDRAM PC150 exist?

Why?

Just courious.

 

[glasszon]

It exist, take a look at this link: http://www.pricewatch.com/1/33/3121-1.htm

They exist because don't forget not everyone have p4 or AXP in their comp, some are still running p1 and they still need a way to get replacement if the ram is dead.

 

[snvpa]

yeah it exists you can prolly pick it up through pricewatch. I know corsair, infineon and other companies produced it but it just came out too late to be of any real use for the performance crowd. Its easily outperformed by plain ole pc 1600 or 2100 so its associated cost premium is uneconomical.

 

[JDXNC]

Its good for people with Tually Celeron's or P3's especially if you want to get over 133 FSB.

 

[flapperhead]

boy this brings back memories, i bought some 133( still works today) hsdram from mushkin 4 yrs ago for ocing my p3 550 i paod 200.00 bux for a 128 stick, so compared to past prices, even the price increases of late seem almpost tame to what i paid

 

[papasurf]

I have a stick that I won from a website; it is 256 of Corsair PC150. It seems so long ago. Now I am using 1 GB of Corsiar which I won recently:
http://www.gruntville.com/contests/corsair.php
But for a while PC150 was hot. I believe Corsair even had PC170.

 

[macklin01]

Indeed, I had Kingmax PC150 (2x256 MB) with a PIII-S for a very long time. I got it up to about 156 MHz FSB pretty well, and I had some limited success with a 160 MHz FSB.

If you want to find some legendary SDRAM, try googling for Tonicom. That was some amazing stuff. Alas, I never got the chance to see some in person, as it was quite rare to find by the time I was looking ... -- Paul

 

[Clevor]

I still run a Coppermine rig and I use a 512 MB stick of Kingmax PC-150 with TinyBGA chips. It runs 150, 2-2-2-5 no problem, but above that have to drop CAS settings. I think it is rated CAS 3 or something.

 

[macklin01]

Yeah, the default CAS is 3 at 150 MHz. I think I could get it to the low 140's at CL2, back when I had it. -- Paul

 

[Clevor]

The Kingmax PC-150 came in two different ICs. The original 512 MB stick I bought had 6.0 ns ram. I bought a backup stick a year later and it had 6.5 ns ICs, but still did 150, 2-2-2-5 . I guess Kingmax figured good enuff!

Interestingly, I could run the stick in a CUSL and all 512 MB was recognized, which was a major issue with that board. Of course on 440BX boards, only 256 MB is seen.

Reason I bought a single 512 MB stick is I was hoping to get around the 150, 2-2-2-5 limit with two 256 MB PC-133 sticks. Nope, didn't help due to the density. If the boards offered more VDIMM maybe . . .

 

[cack01]

My sig below has two sticks of CAS 2.0 PC150 from Corsair. They are running at CAS 3.0 @ 160mhz. Good Stuff.

 

[Clevor]

I found you lose a huge amount of performance when you stray away from 2-2-2-5 timings on slow stuff like SDRAM. If you've ever run a full loop of Memtest, it takes 30-45' - at 2-2-2-5!!! My RDRAM boards click out a full loop in 5-6'.

To get 2-2-2-5 above 150 fsb with 512 MB ram on Coppermines I use my CUV266 boards, which uses DDR. It doesn't bench better, nor does it get significantly better bandwidth, but finding DDR to run 166, 2-2-2-5 is a piece of cake. Morever, the board offers up to 2.8-2.9 VDIMM I think, though I never had to use it. Only caveat is it's a Socket 370 board so can't run my Slot 1s.

However, if you are running dual P3s, you are pretty much out of luck with a DDR board.

 

[macklin01]

Clevor, thanks for the reminder about the 2 different revisions. I had quite forgotten about that. I had the later version.

You're absolutely right about the memtest time. Heck my 1.5 GB of PC3500 still finishes as fast as or faster than my 512 MB of PC150 did at 156 MHz.

Good point about the vdimm back then. I suppose one could try to feed voltage to the slots directly, but it sounds a bit ... risky. -- Paul