COMPTIA A+ Practice Exam

What is the speed and bus specification of PC3-10600?

1. DDR3-1333, 667MHz bus

2. DDR2-1066, 533MHz bus

3. DDR3-1600, 800MHz bus

4. DDR4-2133, 1066MHz bus

The correct answer is: DDR3-1333, 667MHz bus

PC3-10600 is a specific type of DDR3 SDRAM (Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) module that denotes both its speed and bus specification. The designation PC3-10600 indicates that the memory module has a theoretical peak bandwidth of 10,600 MB/s (megabytes per second). This corresponds to a clock frequency of 1333 MHz, derived from the DDR memory technology that transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal, effectively doubling the data rate. In practical terms, while the effective data rate for PC3-10600 RAM is 10600 MB/s, the actual frequency on the memory bus corresponds to 667 MHz when considering the single data rate (one transfer per clock cycle). Therefore, this RAM operates at DDR3-1333 speeds, making it suitable for higher performance systems that support DDR3 memory.