Value DDR2-800 from Super Talent: Where Can You Go?
by Wesley Fink on November 29, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Final Words
All of the seven DDR2 memories we have previously tested have been based on Micron D9 memory chips. The best DDR2 memory we have tested is able to run at DDR2-800 3-3-3 timings and DDR2-1066 at 4-4-3. Performance at these settings is the best we have seen for DDR2, and they remain the standard against which other DDR2 memory is measured. It is worth repeating that all of the best DDR2 memory we have tested has been built with Micron memory chips, which have set the pace for high-end DDR2 memory performance.
The Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4, which is the subject of this review, is not built with Micron chips, it is not top-rated, and the price is definitely in the value segment. So what do you get then, with a Value DDR2-800 designed to sell for less than half the price of the top DDR2 memory available?
You get a lot more than you might expect with the Super Talent. For starters it runs DDR2-800 at 5-5-4 timings at the default 1.8V available on any Socket T or AM2 motherboard. This is something the top-end memory really can't do, since it is generally rated for performance at a higher DDR2 voltage. With just a little more voltage on the Super Talent T800UX2CG5 - a push to 1.95V - you can run stable 4-4-4-12 timings at DDR2-800. At those timings you will give up a few frames per second in games compared to 3-3-3 DDR2-800 timings, but the real performance difference is extremely small.
The Super Talent also will not perform with stability at DDR2-1067, something every other memory in our high-end testing has achieved. Again, this is a value memory and it will run at DDR2-1000, which is frankly outstanding performance for any memory that falls into the value category. The loss of performance at DDR2-1000 compared to DDR2-1067 to 1100 is very small. The biggest handicap might be small crimps in overclocking where you will need lower memory ratios to reach high CPU overclocks on the 965/975 Intel chipsets or the NVIDIA 680i. A modestly overclocked DDR2-1000 can all but match performance at 1066/1100 in the games most are running today.
The bottom line in all our results is that yes, the best DDR2 memory will give you the best performance. If absolute top performance is your goal then choose a memory that can do 3-3-3 at DDR2-800 and 4-4-3 at DDR2-1067. Your reward will be the best memory performance and highest frame rates you can achieve with any memory. However, if your concern is bang for the buck, you will be perfectly fine choosing a memory like Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4. Game performance will be only slightly slower, and you can more than make up for any small performance penalties by putting your savings towards a better video card or a faster CPU.
In the end the Core 2 Duo (and to a lesser extent the AM2) are not particularly memory bandwidth starved in present configurations. As a result the real advantages of faster memory are much smaller than we have seen in past architectures. You can take advantage of this fact by choosing somewhat slower memories with the knowledge that the real-world performance loss will be very small.
The Super Talent T800UX2CG5 is an excellent example of the kind of price compromises that make sense when total system cost is a big concern. If you are working within a tight budget, the Super Talent makes good sense as a value memory that will minimally impact performance, allowing the $100 to $200 savings to go toward a video card upgrade or CPU upgrade.
The Super Talent is certainly not the only good value choice and we will be testing others in the near future. Our advice would be to make sure your value memory choice can deliver solid performance at DDR2-800. Certainly the ability to do 4-4-4 or even better timings is desirable. Then look at where the memory tops out in overclocking tests. There are some good value products starting to appear in the DDR2 memory market and we have no doubt that many more are on the way. The Super Talent T800UX2CG5 is an outstanding choice where value and performance both matter.
All of the seven DDR2 memories we have previously tested have been based on Micron D9 memory chips. The best DDR2 memory we have tested is able to run at DDR2-800 3-3-3 timings and DDR2-1066 at 4-4-3. Performance at these settings is the best we have seen for DDR2, and they remain the standard against which other DDR2 memory is measured. It is worth repeating that all of the best DDR2 memory we have tested has been built with Micron memory chips, which have set the pace for high-end DDR2 memory performance.
The Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4, which is the subject of this review, is not built with Micron chips, it is not top-rated, and the price is definitely in the value segment. So what do you get then, with a Value DDR2-800 designed to sell for less than half the price of the top DDR2 memory available?
You get a lot more than you might expect with the Super Talent. For starters it runs DDR2-800 at 5-5-4 timings at the default 1.8V available on any Socket T or AM2 motherboard. This is something the top-end memory really can't do, since it is generally rated for performance at a higher DDR2 voltage. With just a little more voltage on the Super Talent T800UX2CG5 - a push to 1.95V - you can run stable 4-4-4-12 timings at DDR2-800. At those timings you will give up a few frames per second in games compared to 3-3-3 DDR2-800 timings, but the real performance difference is extremely small.
The Super Talent also will not perform with stability at DDR2-1067, something every other memory in our high-end testing has achieved. Again, this is a value memory and it will run at DDR2-1000, which is frankly outstanding performance for any memory that falls into the value category. The loss of performance at DDR2-1000 compared to DDR2-1067 to 1100 is very small. The biggest handicap might be small crimps in overclocking where you will need lower memory ratios to reach high CPU overclocks on the 965/975 Intel chipsets or the NVIDIA 680i. A modestly overclocked DDR2-1000 can all but match performance at 1066/1100 in the games most are running today.
The bottom line in all our results is that yes, the best DDR2 memory will give you the best performance. If absolute top performance is your goal then choose a memory that can do 3-3-3 at DDR2-800 and 4-4-3 at DDR2-1067. Your reward will be the best memory performance and highest frame rates you can achieve with any memory. However, if your concern is bang for the buck, you will be perfectly fine choosing a memory like Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4. Game performance will be only slightly slower, and you can more than make up for any small performance penalties by putting your savings towards a better video card or a faster CPU.
In the end the Core 2 Duo (and to a lesser extent the AM2) are not particularly memory bandwidth starved in present configurations. As a result the real advantages of faster memory are much smaller than we have seen in past architectures. You can take advantage of this fact by choosing somewhat slower memories with the knowledge that the real-world performance loss will be very small.
The Super Talent T800UX2CG5 is an excellent example of the kind of price compromises that make sense when total system cost is a big concern. If you are working within a tight budget, the Super Talent makes good sense as a value memory that will minimally impact performance, allowing the $100 to $200 savings to go toward a video card upgrade or CPU upgrade.
The Super Talent is certainly not the only good value choice and we will be testing others in the near future. Our advice would be to make sure your value memory choice can deliver solid performance at DDR2-800. Certainly the ability to do 4-4-4 or even better timings is desirable. Then look at where the memory tops out in overclocking tests. There are some good value products starting to appear in the DDR2 memory market and we have no doubt that many more are on the way. The Super Talent T800UX2CG5 is an outstanding choice where value and performance both matter.
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Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Pretty is not good by itself, but pretty IS an indication that a company has the resources to compete in the market and that they are proud enough of their product to make it want to stand out.Our past experience has been that memory that is amateurishly packaged either improves in "pretty" and stays in the market, or dwindles away in the ugly packaging in which it was introduced.
peldor - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
If pretty is an indication of something about a company then I'm worried about AnandTech. Those line graphs in this article are hideous, and the front page ain't too hot. At least that expanding Crossfire ad isn't running anymore.brshoemak - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
this is a little OT but I sincerely hope their enthusiast memory is of a higher quality than their standard DDR memory.We bought around 30 sticks of Super Talent DDR memory and some Corsair ValueRam from a couple different distributors to build PC's with less than a year ago. So far, 16 (over half) of the Super Talent sticks have gone bad and every time I hear of a new PC problem it's almost always Super Talent memory inside.
If the enthusiast memory is better quality that's great, but due to my own personal experience I would be wary of their value-segment offerings. JMO
Xajel - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Users are AMD and Intel, how an Article like this be helpfull if it cover only less than half of the market ?? I hope to see three variants, Intel Core 2, Intel P4 & D and AMD's AM2 platform...Frumious1 - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
In related news, reading comprehension is on the decline so things need to be pointed out with bold flashing text:Page 2:
DDR2 memory performance, in timings and required voltage, are equivalent on the AM2 and Core 2 Duo platforms. This was clearly illustrated in Conroe vs. AM2: Memory & Performance. However, the first generation of AM2 on-processor memory controller does not support any memory timings below 3, or memory speeds above DDR2-800, while both these features are supported on the Intel platform. Timings of 2 are available for RAS-to-CAS and RAS Precharge, and DDR2-1067 is a memory speed option on most Intel motherboards. The lack of extended memory timings and memory speeds makes it more difficult to test the newest high-speed DDR2 memories on an AM2 platform.
In other words, the memory timings and voltages you can get are the same on both platforms. Performance with AM2 while keeping CPU speed constant is going to improve slightly with more bandwidth just like on Core 2. Most people after high-end memory are going to overclock anyway, at which point it's just a matter of determining how high you can go with the various RAM.
Core 2 could use a 1:1 ratio and run with this RAM at up to 2000 FSB. Athlon AM2 could do "1:1" at up to DDR2-1000 as well, but there's no way the HyperTransport bus is going to run at 500 MHz base speed. So you can go with the DDR2-800 divider and get up to around 250 MHz HT speed (a 25% overclock), or you could drop to a lower divider like DDR2-667 and probably hit the limits of your motherboard. If not with the 667 setting then certainly with the DDR2-533 setting. Actual memory speeds on AM2 are a bit different then what you select anyway, depending on CPU, as the final RAM speed is derived from the CPU speed an not from the bus speed.
This is all beside the point, as the main thing to note is that this value RAM will work extremely well for all but the most demanding enthusiasts.
AndyKH - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
As far as I understand, 533MHz DDR2 will theoretically max out the bandwidth on a 1067MHz FSB, as the memory interface is 128 bits, while FSB is 64 bits. Thus, the only reason that the faster memories perform better is that the timings are relative to the clock speed and will therefore get faster with increased memory clock speed. Is this correct?Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
This is partly true. Memory is Double Data Rate so DDR2-533 is the 1:1 match to a quad-pumped FSB base of 266 (1067). Memory ratios run the memory faster, and it performs better, while the base FSB clock remains the same. However, there is also overclcoking. At 1:1 or any given ratio, you can overclock the bus, which overclocks the memory in lock step at the settings you have chosen.With the nVidia 680i, for example, we reached a FSB of 2100 (525 quad-pumped), which is almost a 100% FSB overclock. In that case we had to drop memory ratios so the final memory speed would work with a 2100 bus.
Memory can be clocked higher by ratios or FSB overclocks, or a combination of both. This gives many options in squeezing the most performance from your memory and system.
Xajel - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
the point is not about working and overclockablity or not, it's about compatibility as main concern, some mobos like MSI has hard compatibility with some DDR's like OCZ, some reports they can't even hit DDR2-800 speeds so how about overclocking ??some mobos, like those from ASUS ( mainly K8N's ) need BIOS update to make it possible to work with OCZ memories in DDR2-800 in Dual channel mode, a lot of users start there rigs with two stick on only one channel then do BIOS flash update and then rearrange the stick to enable DualChannel.
some guys need to upgrade but they don't know about compatibility issues they may have with such brand new memory !!
JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
The major concern with compatibility almost always comes from default required voltages. Since this Super Talent requires 1.8V by default, it should work on any DDR2 platform that recognizes the DDR2-800 speed. I'm sure Wes has played with the RAM on more than one motherboard, so if he hasn't made comments about incompatibilities (and he actually mentions the benefits of the 1.8V requirement) then it's about as "safe" as you can get.Cali3350 - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
When might this be available, and perhaps more inportantly if it already is does anyone know where? I cannot find it anywhere.