The New 2GB DDR Kits
The six new kits fall into 2 groups: three kits are rated at DDR400 and three are rated at DDR500.
Two of the DDR400 parts, from G. Skill and Kingston, appear to be based on Infineon B die memory chips, BE5 or BE6. The third DDR400 from Team reached a higher DDR533, but is still likely based on the Infinity B die. The Infineon B die normally performs very well to the DDR480 to DDR 500 range. The DDR500 kit from Mushkin is likely based on Infineon C die memory chips, CE5 or CE6. The C die chips are nearly as fast at slower memory speeds as B die, but they overclock further to the DDR550 to DDR580 range.
Crucial is the marketing arm of Micron, so Crucial is the only 2GB kit featuring Micron memory chips. The Micron-based 2GB chip performs exceptionally well, but availability has been an issue since the Crucial 2GB kit was first introduced. Apparently, yields have been and remain an issue with this 2GB kit.
Corsair submitted a "Value" DDR500 2GB kit for Part 2 that is based on Samsung UCCC memory chips. The Samsung parts are about 60% the price of Infineon 2GB kits. Corsair tells us that the chips are a bit slower in memory timings, but the overclocking capabilities are very good - matching or exceeding the OC capabilities of the Infineon 2GB kits.
This is a very wide range of 2GB kits, and with the retest of our three earlier kits, we will have results from nine 2GB kits to help you choose the 2GB DDR kit that is right for your needs and budget.
The six new kits fall into 2 groups: three kits are rated at DDR400 and three are rated at DDR500.
| Manufacturer | Description (Memory Chips) |
Memory Speed | Rated Timings | Voltage |
| Corsair | TWINX2048-4000PT (Samsung UCCC) |
500DDR | 3-4-4-8 | 2.6V |
| Crucial | CLIII5N.32 PN56278 (Micron) |
500DDR | 3-3-3-8 | 2.6V |
| G. Skill | F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX (Infineon B Die) |
400DDR | 2-3-2-5 | 2.6V |
| Kingston | KHX3200AK2/2G (Probably Infineon B Die) |
400DDR | 2.5-3-3-7 | 2.6V |
| Mushkin | 2GB Redline XP4000 (Infineon C die) |
500DDR | 3-3-2-8 | 2.6V |
| Team | XTreem TXDR 1024M400HC2 (Infineon B die) |
400DDR | 2-3-3-5 | 2.6V |
Two of the DDR400 parts, from G. Skill and Kingston, appear to be based on Infineon B die memory chips, BE5 or BE6. The third DDR400 from Team reached a higher DDR533, but is still likely based on the Infinity B die. The Infineon B die normally performs very well to the DDR480 to DDR 500 range. The DDR500 kit from Mushkin is likely based on Infineon C die memory chips, CE5 or CE6. The C die chips are nearly as fast at slower memory speeds as B die, but they overclock further to the DDR550 to DDR580 range.
Crucial is the marketing arm of Micron, so Crucial is the only 2GB kit featuring Micron memory chips. The Micron-based 2GB chip performs exceptionally well, but availability has been an issue since the Crucial 2GB kit was first introduced. Apparently, yields have been and remain an issue with this 2GB kit.
Corsair submitted a "Value" DDR500 2GB kit for Part 2 that is based on Samsung UCCC memory chips. The Samsung parts are about 60% the price of Infineon 2GB kits. Corsair tells us that the chips are a bit slower in memory timings, but the overclocking capabilities are very good - matching or exceeding the OC capabilities of the Infineon 2GB kits.
This is a very wide range of 2GB kits, and with the retest of our three earlier kits, we will have results from nine 2GB kits to help you choose the 2GB DDR kit that is right for your needs and budget.
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Beenthere - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
Crucial use to be a pretty good memory supplier at one time and I've bought plenty of their products. There seems to have been a philosophical change at Crucial a number of years ago and I stopped buying and recommending their products after a major hassle over one failed DIMM out of the many we had purchased. Seems like their submission of a discontinued product to this 1 Gb review is another example of mis-management and manipulation of the media...In regards to 1 Gig. DIMMS vs. 512 Mb it seems to me relatively few people really need these DIMMS. If you are a serious gamer playing the latest game versions, sure you'll see some small performance improvement for a PRICE. And that is the point really - what do you get in tangible system performance gain and is it of enough emotional value to you to pay the premium price. Obviously for some it is as they will pay $1000 for a CPU, $700 x 2 for 7800 GTX 512 Vid cards, etc. I doubt however that most PC enthusiasts can really justify those prices nor the price premium for 1 Gb DIMMS based on system performance gains.
And along those lines... how often do PC enthusiasts and / or gamers replace their entire PC hardware??? If for instance you are building a new PC now because the Opti 165 / X2 3800+ are a sweet deal, would you really be in the market for a new AMD AM2 system in a 4-6 months when they are readily available??? I doubt many folks replace their hardware that often but I could be wrong. If it is true then I wonder where all the good hardware ends up after it's used for a couple months and then trashed for the latest trick-of-the-week hardware???
xsilver - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
its called ebay - or as some say "egay" :por I think option 2 is the not so rich friends who suck up a lot
option 3 is "damn, I overvolted the cpu to attain max overclock and the damn thing fried itself -- oh well, just buy another fx-60"
note that option 3 people probably fuel the reason for why manufacturers think they can charge us $500+ for a gfx card and $1000+ for a cpu
JarredWalton - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
Worth note - and not shown in the benches here - is that 2GB of RAM can have a massive impact on load times for some of the latest games. It is also incredibly useful when you're editing a bunch of images in Photoshop. The difference in level load times on BF2 is amazing, even when comparing 4x512MB 2T to 2x512MB 1T.BF2 is something of an exception right now, but over the next year I expect more and more games to push the memory requirements beyond 1GB. FEAR is another reasonable example, though not quite as pronounced as BF2. Some of the MMORPGs also get a lot of use from 2GB.
Personally, I won't be buying 512MB DIMMs anymore, but I still use them in systems I build for other people.
johnford64 - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
Why is the OCZ PC4000 XTC and Normal Gold not covered in either article??? The Platnium EB's are too much money, and i would like a good read and comparison on the XTC/Golds. As a side note, Crucial stopped making their 2GB DDR1 kit, so they couldnt replace my dead det, which is why i got the OCZ'sbigtoe36 - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
XTC and golds do feature the same IC, OCZ are moving to replace all old heatspreaders with XTC so you will see some older stock using the old spreader in stores.So apples to apples they should clock near the same but the XTC moduls running a little cooler.
johnford64 - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
But my question is why neither XTC or Gold kits have been reviewed here, if there have please let me know whereMiggle - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
not much difference (in RTCW at least) between 400mhz and 533 (must be the timings). Good review tho.Now, i'm looking for a link that shows how mem timings impact A64 (2-2-2-6 vs 2.5-3-3-7). Hope someone could give me one.
still, me thinks that fast mem = costs too much and not that worth-it. I just bought geil value ram that does 2.5-3-3-6 @ 200mhz and quite happy /w it (on AXP still tho).
android1st - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
I was just trying to decide about my next system whether I should wait for DDR2 or increase the memory on my old system. I think I'm going to wait for DDR2, hopefully AMD will roll out 65nm around the same time as the new socket. And prices will be reasonable and availability will be high. Guess we'll wait and see...Nocturnal - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link
Crucial recently pulled their Ballistix 2GB kits due to unforseen circumstances. Everyone at XS is speculating that all of the RMAs that have been going on is culprit.johnford64 - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
That happened to me, 2 dead kits. They tried to offer me 2GB of PC3200. Like hell i am taking $150 ram in place of my $400 USD ram.