The Return of 2-2-2: Corsair 3200XL & Samsung PC4000
by Wesley Fink on June 15, 2004 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Samsung PC4000
Samsung is one of the world's largest memory manufacturers, and a new product introduction is usually accompanied by white papers and extensive specifications for the new memory. This introduction of DDR500 memory appears a quieter affair as all we have received was a pair of 256MB DIMMs for testing.Test DIMMs were a matched pair of PC4000 256MB single-sided DIMMs.
Click to enlarge.
The memory chips used by Samsung in their new DDR500 memory have no identification on the chip itself that would alert us to the their DDR500 rating.
In fact, the chips are stamped with the same ID that we have seen on other Samsung DDR400 parts.
We wish Samsung had provided double-sided DIMMs or 4 SS DIMMs as they did for our launch review of Samsung DDR466. Two single-sided DIMMs are a bit slower than 2 double-sided DIMMs or 4 SS DIMMs on the Intel 865/875 platform. That makes the pair of single-sided Samsung DIMMs at a performance disadvantage before we even run any performance tests. We explored this fact in our Searching for the Memory Holy Grail - Part 2, and it is also detailed in Intel white papers as shown in the table below from Intel.
| DDR400 (1:1) Performance | DIMM Configuration | Single-Channel or Dual-Channel |
| 1 | 4 DS | Dual Channel |
| 2 | 2 DS or 4 SS | Dual Channel |
| 3 | 2 SS | Dual Channel |
| 4 | 4 SS/DS Mixed Matched Pairs |
Dual Channel |
| 5 | Any DS | Single Channel |
| 6 | Any SS | Single Channel |
It is also normally the case that in the exact same configuration of 2 DIMMs in a dual-channel 512MB total memory will often perform a bit poorer in some benchmarks than 1GB total memory.
Samsung PC4000 Specifications
| Samsung PC4000 Memory Specifications | |
| Number of DIMMs & Banks | 2 DS |
| DIMM Size Total Memory |
256 MB 512MB |
| Rated Timings | 3-3-3 3-4-4-8 SPD at DDR500 |
| Rated Voltage | Unspecified |
As one of the world's largest suppliers of memory, Samsung has extensive specifications for their memory chips and DIMMs on their semiconductor website. We were more than a little surprised that a search for the memory chip part number and the DIMM part number indicated the memory to be a 400/333/266 part. It appears that Samsung is either binning standard production chips for DDR500 performance or they are doing modified production runs that will eventually result in a new part number and timings.
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Pumpkinierre - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Good article again, Wesley. Pity its not DDR500 at 2-2-2. I'm still holding off upgrading. I wouldnt trust that VIA chipset with the Corsair RAM. Plenty of people run their memory outside SPD specs withot problems. And don't give up on the i875 yet. There's a lot of issues with DDR2 and 915/925. I notice that ABIT have brought out a Sckt775 865 mobo. Hmm I wonder why?Also the P4/i875 seems to equal or better the S939 a64 in unbuffered sandra which I wouldnt have expected because of the on die a64 mem. controller etc.. Then in the buffered test the a64 clearly gets the upper hand which again is a suprise as many of the buffers are associated with MMX/SSE/SSE2 where the a64s are supposed to be weaker. I only trust the unbufferd tests but this may explain the fact that the FX chips beat the P4s on memory bandwidth but were behind on the bandwidth intensive encoding tests.
In the one test (Samsung mem.) where you test the a64 at different bus speeds (200&240MHz), the gaming results were equal or worse in the game tests despite an ~85 increase in mem. bandwidth ! Unfortunately you had different memory timings but it reinforces the importance of latency reduction rather than bandwidth for gaming performance.