Introduction
Introduction
With the ever increasing need for speed, and the supply of faster CPUs of course we need faster RAM as well!
A walk down memory lane...
Therefore we have seen a steady increase in the RAM's performance during the last few years, but it has never taken any breath taking steps. Not long ago (back in the good old Celeron 300A days!), the RAM you used at was still PC66 RAM. Not many motherboards and CPUs could use faster RAM. But soon PC100 was in every PC as CPUs moved to the 100 MHz FSB setting, or in the case of the Celeron's they were 'forced' to run 100 MHz FSB or more :)...
Faster RAM came again with PC125, and not long after PC133.
Recently we have seen PC150 and PC166, which have been made necessary by the higher FSB speeds people (strive to) achieve. And with many CPUs now being 133 MHz FSB, FSB speeds of 150 or above is not a rare sight.
RAMBUS
With the introduction of the RAMBUS RAM memory performance took a big stride forward. This seemed to be the cure to all (or at least many) problems as this RAM really gives RAM performance a boost. BUT this RAM cost (and still costs) quite a lot more than your regular RAM so it has never gained the popularity it deserves (?). In time the Pentium 4 might change this, but until now this is the situation.
DDR RAM
This is where DDR RAM comes in. This has a (significantly) lower price tag than the RAMBUS RAM and it's performance is at least theoretically not far from it. Not many people can use it yet, as it has a different connector than regular SDRAM. Where regular SDRAM uses 168 pins, DDR RAM uses 184-pins. However, many motherboard manufacturers have come out with DDR boards, and new ones are released almost weekly.
DDR RAM comes in two flavours: PC1600 and PC2100. PC2100 SDRAM is used in systems with a 266MHz front side bus, and PC1600 SDRAM is used in systems with a 200MHz front side bus.
What makes DDR SDRAM special is that it reads information on both the rising and falling edge of the CPU's clock cycle, which theoretically doubles the speed of memory processing over standard SDRAM. As you will see on the next page, the speed isn't exactly doubled, but it does perform a lot better than standard SDRAM.
The Crucial RAM
The RAM up for review today is is a 256 MB stick of Crucial Non-parity, Unbuffered RAM - of the double sided variety. It has a low price tag (US $98.99 / UK £80.09) compared to other DDR RAM sticks (see other prices here in our Overclocking Pricelist for instance). The stick is not rated at CL2, but rather at CL2.5. But as far as I know, there aren't any PC2100 rated at CL2 yet, so nothing strange there.
[Update]
I just got word that Corsair Micro is releasing some PC2100 CL2 RAM very shortly. Thanks to Jeffrey Ghi for the heads up. Here is the press release where they announce it: http://www.corsairmicro.com/main/PR_ddCAS2.html
Packaging
Crucial RAM comes well packaged as can be seen in the above picture. The RAM is lying in the middle of the two foamy thingies, and with it is a little booklet that explains how to handle and install memory. Not very useful to me, but I'm sure a lot of not so experienced people will appreciate it.
Shipping is always good with Crucial as well. You get an email with your order details, including a tracking number :)... If you buy it direct from them, that is... If you do that, you get a 10% discount as well :)...
Appearance
Picture of the front
Picture of the back
Test Setup
| HARDWARE | | CPU | AMD Thunderbird 1000MHz AXIA Y Stepping (Week 10) | | Cooler | ThermoSonic ThermoEngine V60-4210 | | Motherboard | Asus A7M266 (AMD 760 chipset (click for review) | | Memory | 256MB Crucial PC2100 SDRAM | | Hard Drive | IBM 30.7GB 75GXP 7200 rpm | | Video Card | Leadtek Winfast Geforce 256 32MB SDRAM | | Sound Card | Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live Value | Network Interface Card | | |
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| SOFTWARE | | Operating Systems | Windows 2000 | | Drivers | Nvidia 6.50 DirectX8.0
VIA 4-in-1 V4.29V | | Benchmark Software | SiSoft Sandra Pro 2001SE |
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