Value RAM Roundup: Computing On a Budget

Transcend JM366D643A-50

Transcend will be best known to some of our readers as a manufacturer of flash memory. While flash memory is an important product line for Transcend, they also manufacture storage products and system memory. You will not find Transcend for sale at a huge number of US websites, but Transcend also sells directly to end-users at their website. Transcend has US sites in both Spanish and English, as well as several European language sites, and Taiwan, Japan and China websites.

The 1 Gigabyte of DDR400 arrived as two separate 512MB DIMMs. Transcend packaging is very similar to that used by Kingston for their value products.

There are no heatspreaders on the Transcend CAS 2.5 DIMMs. The memory chips are labeled JetRAM, which is a name used by Transcend for their memory chips. A quick check atwww.newegg.com found 1GB of Transcend CAS 2.5 selling for around $100, which is a lower price than what we normally see for a CAS 2.5 memory.

Specifications

Transcend rates JM366D643A-50 at DDR400 CAS 2.5 and we found the "auto" or SPD timings to be 2.5-3-3-8.

Transcend JM366D643A-50 (DDR400) Memory Specifications
Number of DIMMs & Banks	2 DS
DIMM Size Total Memory	512 MB 1GB
Rated Timings	2.5-3-3
SPD (Auto) Timings	2.5-3-3-8
Rated Voltage	2.6V

Transcend shows both DDR400 CAS 2.5 and DDR400 CAS 3 in their product list, so it is clear that the DIMM products from Transcend are aimed at the Value end of the memory market.

Test Results

Transcend JM366D643A-50 - 2 x 512Mb Double-Bank
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz	Memory Speed	Memory Timings & Voltage	Quake3 fps	Sandra UNBuffered	Sandra Standard Buffered	Super PI 2M places (time in sec)	Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps
12x200	400 DDR	2.5-3-3-6 2.6V 1T	532.0	INT 2420 FLT 2593	INT 6050 FLT 6036	82	111.9
11x218	436 DDR	3-3-3-6 2.8V 1T	529.2	INT 2593 FLT 2735	INT 6393 FLT 6309	82	111.7
12x223 (2.68GHz)	Highest CPU/Mem Performance	3-3-3-7 2.8V 1T	575.5	INT 2668 FLT 2835	INT 6650 FLT 5516	75	122.5

To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.

Transcend is another memory that costs just $100 for a Gigabyte and yet manages to nearly reach DDR450 in overclocking. The cost and performance are very similar to the Kingston CAS 3 rated Value RAM except that Transcend rates its Value RAM at CAS 2.5. While the rated timings differ, both Kingston and Transcend both are stable at CAS 2.5 at DDR400. The Transcend RAM is an excellent value and provides the overclocking capabilities to reach a 12% CPU overclock at 1:1 memory ratio.

We have looked at Aida 32 results in the past, and found them to be very useful in examining read/write performance and memory latency. Aida 32 is now available as Everest Home Edition, a free download from www.lavalys.com.

Transcend JM366D643A-50 (DDR400) 2x512Mb Double-Bank Everest 1.51
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz	Memory Speed	Memory Timings & Voltage	Everest READ MB/s	Everest WRITE MB/s	Everest Latency ns
12x200	400 DDR	2.5-3-3-6 2.6V 1T	5801	1861	47.7
11x218	436 DDR	3-3-3-6 2.8V 1T	6028	1906	48.8
12x223 (2.68GHz)	Highest CPU/Mem Performance 446 DDR	3-3-3-7 2.8V 1T	6306	1989	47.9

It is easy to see in the Everest results that dropping CAS just from 2.5 to 3 in moving from DDR400 to DDR436 offsets virtually all of the performance improvements that you get from higher memory speed. The $100 Transcend reaches on to DDR446 to give you most of the headroom that you need for air-cooled 1:1 overclocking at stock multipliers.