No Runny Eggs

(H/Ts – Dennis and Elliot)

After Dennis got screwed by MU Cerebellum in MKEOnline’s Blog of the Week contest, somebody nominated Ask Me Later for this week’s version. Let’s not have happen to Casper and Cantankerous what happened to Dennis.

I’ve been having some memory problems, which has been leading to the infamous BSOD and numerous program crashes. Hopefully my new memory arrives tomorrow so I can get back in the flow of things. Sorry about the lack of posts; I definitely owe the Blogfather my take on the gay marriage amendment sometime today.

That gets me to the topic du jour this morning – the price of memory, and the general lack of availability of high-quality, high-speed memory in Milwaukee. First, you have to recognize that not all memory is created equal, even beyond the difference between DDR memory (used in most modern AMD systems, including my own, and thus my focus) and DDR2 memory (used in most modern Intel systems), and between memory speeds (in the DDR world, the main ones are DDR333/2700 and DDR400/3200). Low-quality memory will have a preset high CAS (2.5-3 clock cycles in the DDR world, higher in the DDR2) setting and correspondingly-high RAS and pre-charge settings, which produces a noticeable drop in system performance. High-quality memory will have low CAS/RAS settings (the optimal in the DDR world is 2.0 CAS/2 RAS-to-CAS/2 RAS pre-charge/5 active pre-charge), and a correspondingly-high price tag. Side note; I recommend you do NOT root around your BIOS to mess with memory timings because timings that are too aggressive will result in system failures right out of the box.

Since I have a nVidia nForce2 system board that supports dual-channel memory, I also like to take advantage of the performance increase that offers. That requires two identically-sized memory modules; and for optimal performance, those 2 modules should be from the same batch of the same manufacturer (often refered to as a “matched pair”).

With that and the fact I’m looking for 1 GB of memory in mind, let’s see what 2 modules of 512 MB of PC3200 memory goes for in Milwaukee. I could go to Circuit City, take my 1-module-only rebate and a temporary price break on both, and end up paying a net of $85 (with $130 coming out of my pocket and $45 coming back in rebates) for a high-latency set (3-3-3-8). I could go to Milwaukee PC and pay either $120 up-front for some cheap memory (presumably high-latency), $150 for “certified” memory (presumably high-latency; I don’t know if the “certified” is equivalent to “matched-pair”) or $180 for some almost-high-test (2-3-3-6) memory. While the almost-high-test memory can probably run at the optimal 2-2-2-5 settings, there appears to be nobody in Milwaukee that carries memory that will run at those settings by default, and nobody appears to offer “matched-pair” memory (with the MPC caveat)

OR, I could go on-line and pay $66 (including basic shipping) for some low-grade “matched-pair” memory, $91 (including basic shipping and a $15 rebate) for some almost-high-test (2-3-3-6) “matched-pair” memory, or $135 (again including shipping) for “matched-pair” memory that will by default run at the optimal 2-2-2-5 settings and can be overclocked at will. What do you suppose I did?

We had an exciting day yesterday. My national runner-ups survived a heck of a scare; even before the CareBears laid a bomb, we had a bomb scare in their arena; and what double overtime giveth me, single overtime taketh away. My bracket survived Upset Thursday with a couple of scratches, but everything after the weekend is intact so far. I never could figure out the South bracket though.

Winning calls from the prediction post underlined, losers and losing calls struck out, future picks still alive in bold, and substitute teams for early eliminations in italics:

Play-in – Monmouth 71 over Hampton 49

First round, Midwest: Villanova (1) over Monmouth, Wisconsin (9) over Arizona (in the battle of fading programs, the Mildcats have fallen further than Bucky), Montana (12) 87 over Nevada 79 (your historic 12-5 upset split, plus a Milwaukee connection with Montana coach Larry Krystowiak, a former Buck), Boston College (4) 88 over Pacific 66, UW-Milwaukee (11) 82 over Oklahoma 74 (too much offense from Rob Jeter’s group), Florida (3) 76 over South Alabama 50, Northern Iowa (10) over Georgetown (no, there’s no anti-Thompson bias here :-) and Ohio State (2) over Davidson

First round East, er, DC: UConn (1) over Albany, UA-Birmingham (9) over an over-seeded Kentucky, Washington 75 (5) over Utah State 61, Illinois (4) 78 over Air Force 69, George Mason (11) over Michigan State, North Carolina (3) over Murray State, Wichita State (7) 86 over Seton Hall 66, Tennessee (2) 63 over Winthrop 61

First round South, er, Atlanta: Duke (1) 70 over Southern 54, UNC-Wilmington 85 (9) over George Washington 88, Texas A&M (12) 66 over Syracuse 58 (this 12-5 upset’s for you, Owen), Iona (13) 64 over Louisiana State 80, Southern Illinois (11) over West Virginia, Iowa (3) over Northwestern State, California (7) over North Carolina State, Texas (2) over Pennsylvania

First round West, er, Oakland: Memphis (1) over Oral Roberts, Arkansas (8) over no-longer-a-surprise Bucknell, Pittsburgh (5) over Kent State, Kansas (4) over Bradley, San Diego State (11) 83 over Indiana 87, Gonzaga (3) 79 over Xavier 75, Alabama (10) 90 over Marquette 85 (sorry CareBears, Novak and a bunch of freshmen can’t get it done), UCLA (2) 78 over Belmont 44 in the battle of the Bruins

Second round Midwest: "˜Nova over Bucky (if one Wildcat doesn’t beat you, the other one will), BC over Montana, UWM over Florida (that’s right, the Panthers are Sweet-16 dancing again), Ohio State over Northern Iowa

Second round East: UConn over UAB, Illinois over Washington, UNC over George Mason, Tennessee over Wichita State

Second round South: Duke over UNC-Wilmington George Washington, Texas A&M over Iona LSU, SIU over Iowa, California over Texas

Second round West: Arkansas over Memphis, Pittsburgh over Kansas, Gonzaga over San Diego State Indiana, UCLA over Alabama

Midwest Semis: "˜Nova over BC, Ohio State over UWM (too much inside from the Buckeyes)

East Semis: Illinios over UConn, Tennessee over UNC

South Semis: Duke over A&M, SIU over California

West Semis: Pittsburgh over Arkansas, UCLA over Gonzaga

Final Four: "˜Nova, Tennessee, Duke, Pittsburgh

Champion: Duke over Tennessee, Bruce Pearl still gets hoisted off the court on his players’ shoulders