Question about RAM

[mdjaradat]

Hi guys,
My question is about RAM mhz. What exactly does it mean? I know dynamic ram has to refresh itself to preserve its memory, is that what the mhz stand for? the rate at which it refreshes itself? that can't be... and it can't be data transfer on the system bus, because the processor determines the frequency of the system bus. So again, what does the mhz mean on ram? (don't tell me speed or something like that lol)

 

[Geoff]

MHz is directly related to the speed of the memory, I don't know the exact specifics but the speed in MB/s is relative to the speed of the RAM in MHz.

 

[Cromewell]

I know dynamic ram has to refresh itself to preserve its memory, is that what the mhz stand for? the rate at which it refreshes itself? that can't be... and it can't be data transfer on the system bus, because the processor determines the frequency of the system bus. So again, what does the mhz mean on ram? (don't tell me speed or something like that lol)

I'd like to tell you otherwise but Mhz is the speed the RAM transfers at. The system bus may run at a different speed, if it does there is a ratio of bus to RAM speed so that the system can manage transfers.

The act of refreshing the data in memory so that it stays there is handled internally, it happens for each cell every 64ms (can be more often, but that's all that's required by jedec) to counter-act the charge leakage. The actual time between a refresh on any given cell on the stick of memory might be much lower, but if you were to watch only 1 cell, it will be refreshed at around that 64ms interval.

There was a question about the Mhz to PCxxxxx relationship (transfer speed) the other day, http://www.computerforum.com/219379-memory.html