DDR2 Roundup: Reaching for 667 and Beyond
by Wesley Fink on July 8, 2004 12:09 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Kingston PC2-4300 Value RAM
As one of the largest retail and OEM memory suppliers, Kingston produces a huge amount of DIMMs for the world market. As with other finished memory makers, Kingston uses chips from chip manufacturers like Micron, Samsung, Elpida, and others. They then assemble the memory from selected or custom PCBs, and market the finished memory product in the retail and OEM channels.Kingston supplied a pair of Value RAM for the DDR2 roundup. Value RAM is among the most reasonable of the Kingston memory offerings, and they are not specially selected chips such as those used in the Kingston HyperX series, for example.
Test DIMMs were a matched pair of single-sided 512MB DDR2 PC 4300 DIMMs without heat spreaders.
Kingston uses the high-density Elpida chips in their DDR2. This means that they can also easily produce a double-side 1GB version using the same Elpida chips.
Test Results: Kingston PC2-4300 Value RAM
The full suite of benchmark tests were run at all memory speeds. This includes Quake3, Super PI, Sandra 2004 SP2 Memory Tests, Aida 32 Memory Tests, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory. We also ran UT2003, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 at every memory speed to verify stability of the reported memory timings. All benchmarks and additional tests had to complete without incident for the memory settings to be considered stable.| Kingston PC2-4300 (DDR2 533) - 2 x 512Mb Single-Bank | |||||
| Speed | Memory Timings & Voltage | Quake3 fps | Sandra UNBuffered | Sandra Standard Buffered | Super PI 2M places (time in sec) |
| 533DDR 800FSB |
4-3-3-10 1.8V |
367.2 | INT 2877 FLT 2952 |
INT 4886 FLT 4890 |
108 |
| 667DDR 1000FSB |
4-4-4-10 1.9V |
456.1 | INT 3524 FLT 3560 |
INT 6064 FLT 6084 |
86 |
| 686DDR 258FSB |
4-4-4-10 1.9V |
465.8 | INT 3650 FLT 3693 |
INT 6232 FLT 6235 |
85 |
| Kingston PC2-4300 (DDR2 533) | ||||
| Speed | RCW-ET Radar |
Aida 32 Read |
Aida 32 Write |
Aida 32 Total |
| 533DDR 800FSB |
78.0 | 5353 | 2008 | 7361 |
| 667DDR 1000FSB |
97.3 | 6543 | 2392 | 8935 |
| 686DDR 258FSB |
99.5 | 6796 | 2494 | 9290 |
The Kingston Value Ram was an average performer in our tests. We do not know whether this is a result of the single-sided design of the 512MB modules or the result of the Elpida chips performing somewhat poorer than the Micron chips used in Crucial, Micron, Kingmax, and Corsair. The performance is about what you would expect from a bargain DIMM, except for the fact that even the Kingston Value ran without incident at DDR2 667 and at the highest speed DDR2 686, at the same timings and modest voltage settings. The Kingston required slightly slower 4-3-3 timings at DDR2 533 than the DIMMs with Micron chips, but the timings and required voltage at 667 and 686 matched the best in our roundup.
In case the developing message is not clear enough, every memory that we have tested so far in this roundup is able to run at DDR2 667 and DDR2 686 with complete stability. In almost every case, the 667 timings required are 4-4-4 instead of the slower JEDEC 5-5-5 standard. The voltage required for 667 and 686 operation is almost a modest increase to 1.9V from 1.8V in most cases.
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betatest3 - Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - link
The DDR2 667 memory is allready available and price is around $245 to $270 for 512mb .The only memory I found was made by Crucial and some Generic by doing a search on pricewatch.com site The $245 memory can be seen here -->http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?DEPA...
Hmm.. this DDR2 memory was just made for Intel ??? or maybe in newer motherboards can be used with AMD also ? I would not think a newer memory made by many company's would just be designed for intel especially when alot of manufacturers are jumping over to AMD or can AMD use this 667 memory ?
jiulemoigt - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
A very funny thought aquired to me after reading the older article on AMD's DDR2 stance. If their waiting for DDR2 667 and the memory is ready but quitly being called 533 does that mean AMD may actully be ready to pull a fast on Intel? Considering the way the chip is designed could the memory controller be flashed to update to the memory controller the same way the other frequencies are set? Oh and I would not buy a LGA socket the pin's being spring loaded just looks to be trouble :o cool articleWesley Fink - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
FlameDeer -Good catch. P. 6 is corrected to 1032FSB.
FlameDeer - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
Thanks for quick respond at #10, Wesley! :)Really appreciate your hours and hours of hard work to publish this very first hand thorough DDR2 roundup! :)
A quick look again of this good article, I noticed something need to ask. In page 7 till page 14, is that "258FSB" of 686DDR in every table mean 4 x 258 = "1032FSB"? And is this FSB related to page 6 settings no.3 of "1016FSB/DDR2-686"? Just curious, thank you! :)
pookie69 - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
Cool - i think i understand that now.Thanks for replying and explaining. Appreciated :)
Wesley Fink - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
The ratio is 3:4 looking at base clocks (200 to 266). The bus is then quad-pumped to 800 and memory is DOUBLE Data Rate or 533. I do agree it is a bit confusing since the final 800 ratio is 3:2 of the final DDR2 ratio (533).The 975/865 standard was 1:1 since the base clocks are 200, even though the final speeds were 800FSB (quad) and 400 DDR. It was never called 2:1.
pookie69 - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
Nice article - good job :)Only one point; where it reads;
"This is currently slightly below the memory timing of 250 required to run memory at DDR2 667, at the standard 3:4 Intel memory ratio for DDR2."
>>> shouldn't that be a 3:2 ratio?
Or am i confused :S
Nice article again - keep up the good work Mr. Fink ;)
TrogdorJW - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
I think a better conclusion might have been: And the winner is... NO ONE! (Or everyone, depending on whether you see the glass as half full or half empty.) While there are definitely measurable differences in performance between the various memories, reality is that only Quake 3 and Enemy Territory are meaningful benchmarks. Seeing that Quake 3 is one of the most bandwidth hungy games of all time, it's rather telling that a 15.4% advantage in Sandra only equates to a 2.7% performance difference in Quake 3 (and even less in W:ET). I'm not criticizing your work, mind you - just pointing out that the best case scenario of Sandra Unbuffered RAM tests are not the way we actually use our systems.At some point, it would be nice to see a memory roundup that included all the benchmarks that are used in CPU and graphics comparisons. Obviously, that wouldn't be a prudent use of your time when we're still being limited by the motherboard. However, in another six months, I would like to see a memory comparison put together that broadened the field of view in regards to benchmarks.
Great article, though. It will certainly be interesting to see how far each memory type can actually overclock when the motherboard is no longer the limiting factor. For the present, though, it looks like we might as well just save our pennies and buy cheaper DDR2 modules. (Not that any of them are actually "cheap"....)
Pumpkinierre - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
I suppose with all these new goodies, Wesley, you are going to give up on the excellent straight DDR articles you used to do.For the tRAS, the usual formula for DDR is: tRCD+CAS latency + 2 cycles, see:
http://www.mushkin.com/mushkin/pop-up/latencies.ht...
So that seems to work for DDR2 at tRAS >10. I dont know why DDR2 still works at tRAS of 4 though. I also dont know why nForce chipsets have their tRAS so high (10-12) on ordinary DDR.
You've got an engineering sample (multiplier unlocked) Prescott that o'clocks well. So you ought to do some tests at same CPU speed but different FSBs like you have done on the a64s. I know you might think it is stupid given that retail cpus are multiplier locked but some of us want to see whether it is better to put more money in a higher grade cpu or get a cheaper one and o'clock it high using more expensive high speed low latency memory. You had'nt done this with the N'wood/i875 memory tests either, but I cant remember whether you've got a good N'wood engineering sample lying around. Anyway just a suggestion.
ariafrost - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
Now if only DDR2 latencies were lower and the pricetag was less than DDR1 :)