Recently one of my towers died and I tracked the problem to a stick of Crucial ram that Ive had for many years (and also bought second hand from a friend!).
The part in question is a single stick of 512Mb XMS 3200 DDR Ram.
Remembering the Crucial have a lifetime warranty I hopefully applied for an RMA number from their website.
Today (about 14 days later) I receive in the post a brand new matched pair of 512Mb sticks! Not only one replacement but two of them!
Very impressed! :D
Nice one! the RMA guy or girl must have had some the night before, or could it just be the company was a nice company ?
Its probably that they only sold those XMS ram sticks as pairs iirc.
Mathced memory only works properly with 2 of the same batch so theyre assuming youre replacing both of them.
Maybe, but I did only return one of them (and made no mention of a second).
I was pleased enough that the honored their lifetime warranty with no questions and no hassle about proof-of-purchase (which i did not have).
Im still chuffed about it the next day :)
IF you look on their website they state that there is no such thing as matched memory. They do sell pairs but basically they are the same batch and spec. Otherwise there is nothing special. Most Motherboards will run perfectly happily with two sticks from different makers, providing they are capable of meeting the same specification.
Must be that they where feeling kind then! (Or didnt have any single sticks in stock) :)
Quote from: SeriousIF you look on their website they state that there is no such thing as matched memory. They do sell pairs but basically they are the same batch and spec. Otherwise there is nothing special. Most Motherboards will run perfectly happily with two sticks from different makers, providing they are capable of meeting the same specification.
Then their website is wrong (or actually its correct and your interpretation of it is wrong). Two chips from the same silicon wafer are matched. Thats what it means - saying theres no such thing as matched and they have to come from the same batch is a bit of a misnomer.
Its not an issue in todays memory but it was (and was the reason matched pairs of memory came about in the first place. Its still an issue in very high speed memory interfaces today where timings are very tight and having a wafer with a different doping can vary the timings enough to cause problems. Consumer PCs dont need that level of tight timings at the moment so people dont see it.
Early DDR 400
was right at the limit of what could be mass produced. When you tried to overclock them, undervolt them or in many cases just try and run them at stated specs they failed. Many of the members of this forum will remember being early uptakers of DDR and matched sticks and still finding they couldnt run at the default voltage etc. Hence matched memory. Its a real thing. Anyone who tells you otherwise has either a short term memory or no idea what theyre on about :)
The only reason you can use whatever you like today is because every fab in the world can knock out a chip with better than spec timinngs and clock it down to the 200MHz.