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Registered and Unbuffered Memory

Whether you need to use registered modules or can get away with less expensive unbuffered memory depends entirely on your motherboard. Information on the memory requirements of your motherboard can be found in your motherboard manual or by contacting us. Most motherboards don't require registered memory, and most of them won't work with registered memory. Generally, registered modules are only used in server motherboards and sometimes in workstation motherboards. Some of these motherboards will only accept registered memory, while others require registered memory only when more than a certain amount of memory is installed. If your motherboard doesn't require registered memory for the amount of memory you're installing, or ever plan on installing, then buying registered memory for it would be a waste of money. If your motherboard manual doesn't mention registered memory then purchase unbuffered memory.

On Registered DIMM's the address and control signals from your motherboards chipset get intercepted and buffered by two or three register chips on the module. As opposed to unbuffered DIMM's where the address and control signals go directly into every RAM chip on the module. Because the address and control signals only have to go to the register chips on a Registered DIMM, instead of each and every RAM chip on all the memory modules installed in your computer, the load on your motherboard chipset's address and control pins is greatly decreased. This decrease in load allows the motherboard's chipset to drive the address and control signals quickly enough to remain stable when a large amount of memory is installed. Without these register chips the load on your motherboard's chipset might prevent it from being able to provide enough power to drive the address and control signals quickly enough to keep up with the precise timing requirements that the memory bus needs to transport data reliably.

Back in the day of EDO and FPM SIMM's, the functions registered chips in today's DIMMs was handled by buffer chips. But for some reason unknown to us the term buffered changed to registered, but the term unbuffered didn't change to unregistered.