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JUL 2011 maximumpc.com

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WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...

DDR 1333 vs. 1600

High-Speed Greed

The Dual PC

What’s the Sweet Spot

for RAM?

What’s the difference between

DDR3/1333 and DDR3/1600

in terms of performance?

In what way is the latter

superior? Will DDR3/1600 at

CL8 beat DDR2/800 CL5? And

DDR3/1333 CL7? Also, what

about overclocked DDR3—say,

DDR3/2000?

–Robert Bayly

SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH

UNG RESPONDS:

Synthetic

benchmarks that stress the

memory bandwidth of the

RAM will show fairly sig-

niﬁ cant differences between

DDR3/1333 and DDR3/1600 or

DDR3/2000. However, most

applications will not exhibit

signiﬁ cant increases due to

increased memory band-

width or low latency. This is

likely the result of the way

applications are designed and

also the massive caches that

modern CPUs include. The

sweet spot, frankly, seems to

be DDR3/1333.

What about Incoming

VoIP?

All VoIP phones are good

for outgoing calls. What no

one addresses are incoming

calls. My cable provider has

been trying to sell me phone

service for a year. I live in a

suburb of a large metroplex.

In order to have local service,

I have to subscribe to AT&T’s

“extended metro service.”

This makes both incoming

and outgoing calls free. After

several conversations with my

cable provider, they acknowl-

edged incoming calls under

their service would in fact be

long distance. I have emailed

Ooma’s tech support asking

this same question, but so far

have gotten no response. Can

you tell me if any providers of

VoIP can in fact give you free

incoming service? If I choose

a local area code using Ooma,

would incoming calls be local?

–David Rain

SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH

UNG RESPONDS:

VoIP phones

are no different than cel-

lular phones. Local and long

distance coverage are tied to

the area code and preﬁ x. If

you lived in Los Angeles, but

your cell phone still has your

New York area code, anyone

dialing that number from Los

Angles would pay long dis-

tance. If you changed your cell

phone or VoIP to a Los Ange-

les area code, there would

be no long distance charges

for people dialing it from the

same area. So, this very much

depends on what number you

select for your VoIP account

at setup. And, yes, long dis-

tance and toll calling billing

models are antiquated.

Dual-PC Build It?

I’ve had this idea for years.

Imagine taking two PCs and

sliding them side by side and

removing the middle side pan-

els. You’d have a double-wide

PC case holding two separate

units on which you could run

two different operating sys-

tems. On the front, you control

which one is turned on (one

or both), and the front audio,

USB, and FireWire jacks could

be shared. The case opens

in the middle on a hinge to

access the inside, and both

back panels could come off.

Can the “Build It” crew handle

something like this?

–Cassandra Murray

SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

NATHAN EDWARDS RESPONDS:

Cassandra, we know of at

least one company that does

just that. Mountain Mods,

the company who made the

chassis for our 2010 Dream

Machine, offers several case

configurations that can hold

two full PCs with standard

ATX motherboards. The

Ascension Duality and U2-

UFO Duality are the cases to

look for.

High-Speed Greed

I found myself in a very simi-

lar situation to what George

Jones described in his edito-

rial in MaximumPC’s June

issue (Ed Word, “High-Speed

Greed”). When I wanted to

upgrade to the Motorola

Atrix, I made two separate

phone calls to make sure

I could keep my unlimited

data plan before I made the

switch. The ﬁ rst rep I spoke

with wasn’t 100 percent sure,

but thought I could keep it.

So I waited a couple days and

called AT&T a second time.

This time, the rep I talked to

was familiar with the issue

and told me, without a doubt,

I could keep it. So I purchased

the Atrix as soon as it became

available. What did AT&T do

with my data contract? They

canceled it completely, and

started charging me by the

MB! I called AT&T and they

admitted to messing up. But

the system wouldn’t let them

put my unlimited data plan

back. I asked to speak to a

↘ submit your questions to: comments@maximumpc.com

CUT, COPY, PASTE

In the review of the HP

Dm1z in our June issue,

we mentioned that the

notebook didn’t easily ac-

commodate hardware up-

grades. We were wrong.

If you remove the battery,

the underside of the note-

book easily lifts off, ex-

posing both RAM and hard

drive bays.

you write, we respond