Unganged mode enables two 64bit wide DRAM Controllers (DCT0 and DCT1). Ganged mode means that there is a single 128bit wide dual-channel DRAM Controller (DCT)Įnabled. Ganged vs Unganged: that actually doesn't have to do with single or dual channel. You can see the size of the chip, they type of RAM, and the frequency that it’s operating at. There’s also a timing table to show details based on the configuration.Great article, Tradesman! I give it Two thumbs up and two big toes up too! This tab shows information about the memory stick in each specific slot on the motherboard. To complete a memory upgrade, you would probably need a little bit more information. I find it particularly helpful when overclocking. Most of the other info on this tab is for advanced users. The memory is DDR (as opposed to DDR2 or DDR3), and that it is running in dual channel mode.
The Memory tab is also very useful because most people that upgrade their computers add more memory. In the image above, you can see that I have 2 GB of memory in this system (2048 MB). This a rare occurrence and I have only ever seen the problem with this particular board. Unfortunately for this example, CPU-Z was unable to detect my motherboard manufacturer. This is important to know if I was upgrading the video card. What that means is that my video card is PCI-E based and not AGP.
From the screenshot below, we can see that I am using an nForce4 based motherboard that supports x16 PCI-Express. This covers things like the motherboard manufacturer, chipset, BIOS, and graphics interface. On the Mainboard tab, you will find a lot of information that is useful when upgrading or replacing components. The Cache tab elaborates on the cache information from the CPU tab. I’ve never had a lot of use for this data, but it’s here and you never know when it might come in handy. Try not to be overwhelmed by the data and focus in on what you want to see.įor example, on the CPU tab the average user will be interested in the Name of the CPU, Specification, Instructions, Core Speed, Bus Speed, and Level 2 Cache size. Power users will likely be interested in the rest of the information for various purposes. Selecting each tab will open up a world of information, including some things that you never even wanted to know. The tabs are labelled CPU, Cache, Mainboard, Memory, SPD, and About. The window is laid out as a series of tabs that sort information into logical categories. Once loaded, the information is readily accessible in and easy to navigate format. You should see the following image on your screen while the program is loading. Once you have the folder set up and you are ready to go, start CPU-Z by double-clicking on the cpuz.exe file. When you don’t want CPU-Z any more, you just delete the folder. You simply extract the zip contents to a folder and run it from there.
This program doesn’t have a fancy installer because it doesn’t install itself into your system.
In situations like this, I tend to just create a folder on my desktop and extract the files from the zip archive into that folder. The package comes as a zip file, so you’ll need to unzip it. To get started, head on over to the CPU-Z home page and download the latest version of the software (at the time this article was written, the current version was 1.50).