Rom

[Ethanadams]

Does to much rom slow down your computer?

[Dkmdlb]

How do I shot web?

[Slam_Jones]

Is bats? (10char)

[Bolche]

ROM? Most personal computers dont have a proper Read Only Memory (ROM) anymore.

If you mean RAM, them the answer is NO.

[Ravenchant]

I'm trying to determine if this is a troll post or not...but it's hard.

[K^2]

ROM? Most personal computers dont have a proper Read Only Memory (ROM) anymore.

If you mean RAM, them the answer is NO.

There is still some EEPROM for BIOS.

Also, yes, too much ROM will slow your computer down. Enough ROM can make it heavier. But consider offsetting this with more boosters.

[Vanamonde]

Just answer the question if you can, guys. No need to spam up the forum with posts about other's posts.

[ZedNova]

Rom? I don't think hardly any parts of computers use Read Only Memory anymore. (At least true ROM)

If you mean RAM, then no, more RAM shouldn't slow your system down. Unless by adding it you are disabling a feature such as dual channel mode, or adding a stick with an insanely low clock speed.(Which would make all the modules run at the slowest module's speed)

Edited February 21, 2015 by ZedNova

[linkxsc]

Rom? I don't think hardly any parts of computers use Read Only Memory anymore. (At least true ROM)

If you mean RAM, then no, more RAM shouldn't slow your system down. Unless by adding it you are disabling a feature such as dual channel mode, or adding a stick with an insanely low clock speed.(Which would make all the modules run at the slowest module's speed)

I know some motherboards prefer having a single RAM stick in a particular slot (not necessarily the 1 you think is "first") and will run a tiny bit faster if your single RAM stick is installed there. (Goes out the window with several sticks though)

[K^2]

I know some motherboards prefer having a single RAM stick in a particular slot (not necessarily the 1 you think is "first") and will run a tiny bit faster if your single RAM stick is installed there. (Goes out the window with several sticks though)

Yes. This has to do with how multiple channels are handled. But a single stick in the correct slot won't run faster than a pair of matching sticks in both slots. The slowdown (or total failure to work properly) is only for single stick in the wrong slot.

[Camacha]

[Post has been redacted by Vanamonde]

I know some motherboards prefer having a single RAM stick in a particular slot (not necessarily the 1 you think is "first") and will run a tiny bit faster if your single RAM stick is installed there. (Goes out the window with several sticks though)

Most commonly modern motherboards will be slightly faster with two sticks of RAM in the appropriate slots, as dual channel mode can be engaged. The gains are admittedly small, but they are pretty much free. Some boards are capable of utilising other multiples, like three or even four sticks, for respectively triple or quad channel mode. Those can use whatever mode is available, though for any of those you will need a set of RAM sticks of equal size. Speed and other parameters do not have to be the same, though the system will revert to the slowest speed in the bunch when using unequal sets.

Edited February 22, 2015 by Camacha

[K^2]

Maybe my trivia on this is a bit outdated, but I wasn't aware of motherboards being capable of utilizing more channels on dual DIMM setup vs single DIMM. It was my understanding that hardware could either address a single DIMM in dual address mode, or two separate sticks in single mode. Has that changed?

[Leszek]

Back in the day RAM had to refresh itself at regular intervals. Basically some forms of RAM will forget what is stored if you don't periodically renew their contents. Well before overclocking was a word you could change the refresh rates of your RAM and improve system performance. Eventually you would set the refresh rate too long and the system would become unstable. I am not sure exactly how it is done today but that particular tweak isn't something I have come across since the 80's.

I recall it was tribal knowledge that too much ram would slow your system down due to refresh overhead circa Windows 95 but I don't know if it was true or just a technical urban legend. It could have even been a false holdover from a time it was true. People around that time would also do things like park the hard drive. The drives about the Win95 era were already self parking but many people insisted on manually parking the drive. Now-a-days, I expect the younger people here don't even know what I mean by park the drive.

[Camacha]

Maybe my trivia on this is a bit outdated, but I wasn't aware of motherboards being capable of utilizing more channels on dual DIMM setup vs single DIMM. It was my understanding that hardware could either address a single DIMM in dual address mode, or two separate sticks in single mode. Has that changed?

At the risk of underestimating your knowledge (as I understand you work in a related field) I found this to be a useful resource for a short explanation.

Using the empirical approach: tests do quite consistently show an improved performance. In the case of quad channel mode it can even be 70% more than when running in dual channel mode. Of course, memory alone is not going to decide computer speed, so actual total system performance gains are typically a lot smaller.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Camacha

[cpast]

Back in the day RAM had to refresh itself at regular intervals. Basically some forms of RAM will forget what is stored if you don't periodically renew their contents. Well before overclocking was a word you could change the refresh rates of your RAM and improve system performance. Eventually you would set the refresh rate too long and the system would become unstable. I am not sure exactly how it is done today but that particular tweak isn't something I have come across since the 80's.

I recall it was tribal knowledge that too much ram would slow your system down due to refresh overhead circa Windows 95 but I don't know if it was true or just a technical urban legend. It could have even been a false holdover from a time it was true. People around that time would also do things like park the hard drive. The drives about the Win95 era were already self parking but many people insisted on manually parking the drive. Now-a-days, I expect the younger people here don't even know what I mean by park the drive.

This is true for modern RAM as well. It's because values are stored in a capacitor with a transistor used to prevent the charge from decaying; as transistors aren't perfect, it has to be refreshed every so often (the refresh rate these days is generally 64ms between refreshes, and is required to be at least that often). That's what the 'D' stands for in SDRAM (which modern RAM is). It's just that modern DIMMs have the refresh handled on the DIMM, so the CPU doesn't have to worry about it (but it does still draw power).

[K^2]

At the risk of underestimating your knowledge (as I understand you work in a related field) I found this to be a useful resource for a short explanation.

Using the empirical approach: tests do quite consistently show an improved performance. In the case of quad channel mode it can even be 70% more than when running in dual channel mode. Of course, memory alone is not going to decide computer speed, so actual total system performance gains are typically a lot smaller.

Ah, I see. Between this link (thank you) and some reading up that I've done, my knowledge was, indeed, considerably outdated. The same exact practice, using two parallel memory units, was in place with older machines to get 64 bits of data per clock from two SIMM units, which were capable of sending just 32 bits per clock. This was later addressed with DIMM, which is modern memory architecture, by having each DIMM unit perform two memory reads per clock. Double Data Rate. When DDR came about in late 2000s, it removed the need for having two parallel sticks of RAM. That was the state of my knowledge. Modern Dual Channel access, however, pulls the same paired RAM scheme on DIMMs, which allows getting 128 bits per clock, effectively, making it quadruple data rate. Hence my confusion. Again, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Always appreciated.

[magnemoe]

Ah, I see. Between this link (thank you) and some reading up that I've done, my knowledge was, indeed, considerably outdated. The same exact practice, using two parallel memory units, was in place with older machines to get 64 bits of data per clock from two SIMM units, which were capable of sending just 32 bits per clock. This was later addressed with DIMM, which is modern memory architecture, by having each DIMM unit perform two memory reads per clock. Double Data Rate. When DDR came about in late 2000s, it removed the need for having two parallel sticks of RAM. That was the state of my knowledge. Modern Dual Channel access, however, pulls the same paired RAM scheme on DIMMs, which allows getting 128 bits per clock, effectively, making it quadruple data rate. Hence my confusion. Again, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Always appreciated.

This is true, most modern motherboards uses two channels and using both give double transfer capacity from memory. My LGA 2011 motherbord even uses four channels.

Now using four dimm in an two channel system might reduce memory clock speed a litle, speed is anyway locked to the slowest sets of modules however in practical use the extra memory will make your system work better simply by working as disc cache.

[Nuke]

i dont think they make rom anymore, certainly not the write once and if there are bugs in your firmware then deal with it kind. or those cool eproms with the little window in the chip where you had to erase it with uv light. modern eeproms are pretty good, i sometimes wonder why they arent used instead of flash. i know working with arduino that you can overwrite the eeprom about 10x as often as the flash before it degrades. its probably a density thing.

most of the modern eeproms ive used have a serial interface, and so would be somewhat slower than a typical storage device. older mobos used to have those removable eeprom/flash chips with a parallel interface, but a fairly recent mobo had a socketed 8-pin dip spi eeprom, which i thought looked out of place on a modern mobo. then again you really dont need to run much code off of it. just enough to get start a bootloader. once the computer is up and running it relies little on the bios. in the old days the computer was dependent on a lot of bios code but i think those dependencies have been solved in other ways.

[magnemoe]

i dont think they make rom anymore, certainly not the write once and if there are bugs in your firmware then deal with it kind. or those cool eproms with the little window in the chip where you had to erase it with uv light. modern eeproms are pretty good, i sometimes wonder why they arent used instead of flash. i know working with arduino that you can overwrite the eeprom about 10x as often as the flash before it degrades. its probably a density thing.

most of the modern eeproms ive used have a serial interface, and so would be somewhat slower than a typical storage device. older mobos used to have those removable eeprom/flash chips with a parallel interface, but a fairly recent mobo had a socketed 8-pin dip spi eeprom, which i thought looked out of place on a modern mobo. then again you really dont need to run much code off of it. just enough to get start a bootloader. once the computer is up and running it relies little on the bios. in the old days the computer was dependent on a lot of bios code but i think those dependencies have been solved in other ways.

The flash memory who contains the traditional bios rom functionality is loaded into memory as part of the boot process. This was very important in Dos, Less important in Win NT/ 2000 and totaly out in Win 8 / 10, this has no impact on computer performance compared with the performance differences between Windows NT, 7 or 8.

[lajoswinkler]

AFAIK there's always some ROM inside. BIOS needs it.

[cpast]

I think there's some form of ROM inside the processor itself, to store microcode for more complicated instructions.

[technicalfool]

I think there's some form of ROM inside the processor itself, to store microcode for more complicated instructions.

For x86 and some others I think that's the case, yes. New or different instructions can be defined without necessarily burning any more gates on the chip or changing the circuitry around. There's also whatever bootstrapping mechanism the computer uses, which can't really go anywhere else but on a ROM of some sorts. Granted, I think these days most ROMs, especially in anything consumer-market, are electrically or UV-erasable and reprogrammable.

As for RAM, no, I can't think how more of it would slow your computer down unless you got the types mixed up. The different sticks will go at the speed of the slowest stick on the board, so it helps to make sure you match speeds. Depending on what you use the machine for, putting heaps of RAM in it might not make it much faster, but it won't slow it down.