Crucial Ballistix DDR2: The New DDR2 Standard?
by Steve Carmel & Wesley Fink on February 21, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Final Words
Crucial Technology and Micron have introduced some new and very competitive low-latency DDR2 memory chips and DIMMs. They are certainly competitive with the best DDR2 in the current market and deserve to be on your shopping list for DDR2 memory.
We have heard that the new Crucial DIMMs fare better on the upcoming AM2 platform, but until AM2 launches and we can test for ourselves, this is just speculation. AMD's new AM2 Athlon 64 memory controller will finally allow the use of DDR2 memory on the A64 platform, and the hope is the integrated DDR2 memory controller will finally allow DDR2 to run at the low latencies that will make DDR2 a compelling choice compared to DDR memory. In due time, we will have answers to these questions.
With AMD entering into the DDR2 fray, this will finally provide some apt competition to Intel DDR2 solutions, which have been on the market well over a year already. Will AMD's new AM2 engineering provide enough impetus to spur the DDR2 market further? Will there be enough DRAM manufacturing capacity to support future demands? The memory market is already behaving as if this will be the case. Most memory makers are no longer putting development work in new DDR products with most of the current R&D directed towards DDR2 improvements.
After torture-testing both the Crucial PC2-5300 DDR2 and the PC2-6400 DDR2 2GB memory kits, this reviewer was quite pleased. Not only did the memory run below specified voltages (2.2v), but stress testing such as dual instances of Prime95, SuperPi, or Memtest86 barely budged these modules. Both of these Ballistix parts are using the same IC's, albeit with slightly different Serial Presence Detect (SPD) programming. The retail pricing is $389.99 for the DDR2-800 2GB kit, and $360.99 for the DDR2-667 kit from Crucial Technology. The price for these 2GB DDR2 memory kits are not cheap, but the quality is high with performance as good as you will find in DDR2 availability today.
Those able to scale their processors high enough to ramp to sufficient front side bus speeds will see some very beneficial bandwidth and efficiency numbers produced by this pair of quality DDR2 modules. Enthusiasts using water cooling or phase changed solutions will be most apt to reap the benefits from this new Crucial memory.
More information about the new Micron memory chips will be available shortly. Other competing manufacturers such as Corsair and OCZ Technology will be able to source the same IC's and be competitive in the DDR2 marketplace. Look for this to occur by early March. We extend our personal thanks to Crucial, and Sam Harmer, in particular, for providing AnandTech with these new DDR2 modules as soon as they hit the market. Crucial/Micron, as always, was very helpful in providing information for this review.
Crucial Technology and Micron have introduced some new and very competitive low-latency DDR2 memory chips and DIMMs. They are certainly competitive with the best DDR2 in the current market and deserve to be on your shopping list for DDR2 memory.
We have heard that the new Crucial DIMMs fare better on the upcoming AM2 platform, but until AM2 launches and we can test for ourselves, this is just speculation. AMD's new AM2 Athlon 64 memory controller will finally allow the use of DDR2 memory on the A64 platform, and the hope is the integrated DDR2 memory controller will finally allow DDR2 to run at the low latencies that will make DDR2 a compelling choice compared to DDR memory. In due time, we will have answers to these questions.
With AMD entering into the DDR2 fray, this will finally provide some apt competition to Intel DDR2 solutions, which have been on the market well over a year already. Will AMD's new AM2 engineering provide enough impetus to spur the DDR2 market further? Will there be enough DRAM manufacturing capacity to support future demands? The memory market is already behaving as if this will be the case. Most memory makers are no longer putting development work in new DDR products with most of the current R&D directed towards DDR2 improvements.
After torture-testing both the Crucial PC2-5300 DDR2 and the PC2-6400 DDR2 2GB memory kits, this reviewer was quite pleased. Not only did the memory run below specified voltages (2.2v), but stress testing such as dual instances of Prime95, SuperPi, or Memtest86 barely budged these modules. Both of these Ballistix parts are using the same IC's, albeit with slightly different Serial Presence Detect (SPD) programming. The retail pricing is $389.99 for the DDR2-800 2GB kit, and $360.99 for the DDR2-667 kit from Crucial Technology. The price for these 2GB DDR2 memory kits are not cheap, but the quality is high with performance as good as you will find in DDR2 availability today.
Those able to scale their processors high enough to ramp to sufficient front side bus speeds will see some very beneficial bandwidth and efficiency numbers produced by this pair of quality DDR2 modules. Enthusiasts using water cooling or phase changed solutions will be most apt to reap the benefits from this new Crucial memory.
More information about the new Micron memory chips will be available shortly. Other competing manufacturers such as Corsair and OCZ Technology will be able to source the same IC's and be competitive in the DDR2 marketplace. Look for this to occur by early March. We extend our personal thanks to Crucial, and Sam Harmer, in particular, for providing AnandTech with these new DDR2 modules as soon as they hit the market. Crucial/Micron, as always, was very helpful in providing information for this review.
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gudodayn - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Not to take anything away from Crucial or OCZ but DDR2~800 @ 4-4-4-12 has been on the market since last year!!!Like the article said "Other competing manufacturers such as Corsair and OCZ Technology will be able to source the same IC's......". This isnt just Corsair and OCZ, there are others. Mind you these US memory companies get their work done a lot by Taiwan manufacturers. How about Geil and PQI?? PQI have TurboMemory DDR2~900 @ 4-4-4-12 and a DDR2-1000 @ 5-5-5-15 and both are 1Gb sticks.
What makes these Crucial sticks special?? Nothing apparently according to the benchmarks. It is nothing more than a publicity advertisement for them......New DDR2 Standard?? I think not!!!!
Unless you have a rare batch of TCCD equivalent in DDR2 form, the playing field seems pretty even between memory manufacturers to me at the moment.
Xenoterranos - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Ah winbond megachips, where have you gone to??ozzimark - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
slightly confused because i don't think i ever see the pc2-6400 running at 400mhz? just give me a chart with the max speed with varying timings and i'll be happy. if not, i'll get some myself and do it :pAvalon - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
No, I'm with you Zebo. I can't wait for DDR2 on AMD's AM2. I'll be getting one of those 35w X2 3800+ CPUs and some phase change ;)BrownTown - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
why the heck would anyone get phase change on a 35W CPU, thats complete freaking overkill. I hope its not because you intend to overclock it becasue then you will be sorely disapointed. How do you think AMD got it down to 35W? they replaced the current highspeed transistors with ones that sacrifice speed for power consumption. OF course with the FX-62 they have to go the other way and therefore get 125W, but great speed. Seeing as that only a 50% clock increase for more then 3x the power consumption. The new low power transistors will be low-voltage, low-power, and low-speed. Sorry, no free lunch, everything comes at a cost, and here its power for speed.Leonidas1 - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Haha, lower speed transistors, you think they would honestly engineer two versons? I highly doubt it, I don't know a lot about CPU's but my guess is that these low power chips are got the same way the turions are they are tested and binned for speed and voltage. The ones that work at lower voltages at high speeds become these special low wattage CPUs and the others become regulars. I dont know about overclocking but I would guess they would overclock better too. Just a guess because no one knows yet though.BrownTown - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
its always interesting when people mock you and then follow it by saying "I don't know a lot about CPU's". But, you are right, they will do the same that they did with Turion. And what they did with Turion was to use differnet transistors than they did in the A64... Before making statements its best to confirm with Google, takes 10 seconds and make you not look like an idiot...ozzimark - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
there are "fast" and "slow" transistors actually.. ;)Zebo - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
Am I the only pne who can't wait for DDR2 to be supported by AMD on 6/6/6? Rumour has it unofficial DDR2-800 support - combined with A64 superior memcontroller 3-2-2 800 possible? I hope it's tested Wes.Googer - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
Zebo, I think I am staying away form any RAM that has Satanic Memory Timings.As for the Socket AM2 Tomshardware has already benchmarked it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/21/a_look_at_a...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/21/a_look_at_a...