I have ram questions, Could someone explain the terms for me. When refering to ram - CL2 PC2100 ECC, Pin 184 What is, ECC versus Non ECC, CL2 versus CL1 or CL3 or whatever else there is what is 184 Pin, Is this the newer pin compared to the old PC133 SD RAM? Can you put faster ram like PC3400 in a mobo that only supports 2700..... Likewise put slower ram 2100 in a 2700 mobo? I have an A7V333 Mobo used... Any recommendations for specific brand of ram for this MOBO?

CL 2 - Column Address Strobe (CAS) Latency. The time between activation of Row Address and Row address being ready before the Column address is activated. The lower the better. CL 2 is the lowest. You will also find CL 2.5 and CL 3 ECC = Error Correcting Code. Automatically corrects some RAM errors. Only normally used in high end servers. Motherboard must be designed to use ECC RAM for it to work. 184 pin is just that. There are 184 pins on the RAM module. SDRAM has 168 pins. You can use faster memory but it will only work at the slower speed determined by the motherboards FSB. Putting in slower memory will only work if you reduce the FSB to accommodate it. Try these two. They have everything you ever wanted to know about RAM in including a search facility to find the correct RAM for your motherboard. http://www.crucial.com/ or http://www.kingston.com/ Stuart

Excellent, Thanks a bunch!

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any name brand is okay, and yes the majority of DDR and mobos are backwards-forwards compatible. if you run PC3200, it will only run at PC2700 if that is what you board suppports, but it will work. HP Vectra VL400 1.0ghz Pentium 3 512mb PC133 SDRAM 120gb 7200rpm 8mb cache WD1200JB hard drive ATI Radeon 9200 128mb AGP video card