HatedEnemY

Okay so this is pretty much my first FAQ so I hope i do this right.

A bank is the total number of SIMMs that can be accessed simultaniosuly by the chipset. The "width" of the external data bus divided by the "width" of the SIMM sticks.

So pretty much if you you have DIMMs like DDR SD RAM one stick will fill a bank but this is for you all that haven't had to mess with banks because they were before your time, heck pretty much before I got into computers too! But anyway the following info is explaining Banks in a more definative in example type thing

Each bank of RAM can deliver data the full width of the data bus, so a bank on a 486 would be 32-bits wide, whereas a bank on a Pentium 2 would be 64-bits wide. to fill a bank sometimes it takes more than a single stick of RAM depending on the width of both the bus and the RAm stick. a single 72-pin SIMM, capable of holding data in 32-bit rows, for example fills a bank on a 486 system. that same stick of RAM on a pentium 2 system, in contrast would only handle half the duties. you'd need to add another 72-pin SIMM to make up the other 32 bits of the data bus.just as the cpu does not care where the data it requests is physically located in RAM, it also doesnt care if the data for a single, 64-bit row actually resides on two separate RAM sticks. The northbirdge handles all the details and simply sends the requested data to the cpu on the data bus.


Best of luck!