When someone speaks about performance memory, most people will instantly think of Corsair. Here at OcPrices we reviewed some of their PC2400 when it first came out, and it reached the then unheard of speed of 162MHz at CAS 2 (with additional voltage). Pretty impressive. With their new "XMS PC2700" Corsair are promising true CAS 2 performance at 166MHz. I don't like heat-spreaders, they do absolutely nothing for heat dissipation, especially when stuck onto the chips with double sided tape. Getting the spreaders off the Corsair was no easy task. One would almost think they had something to hide!
Sure enough, under the spreaders we find 7.5ns micron chips. That’s the same stuff as is used on PC2100 Crucial, except that Corsair cherry pick high performing batches. 1000/7.5 still = 133MHz however so I am already a little dubious of how well this RAM will perform. Lets hope it has as much extra in the bag as the PC2400 did!
First of all, we tested at standard voltage (2.5V), then at 2.8V to determine the absolute max this ram could take, however I would not urge people to run their memory above 2.7V in the long term.
Speed Checkpoint
Default V
2.8V
166MHz CAS 2 FASTEST
PASS
PASS
166MHz CAS 2 TURBO
FAIL
PASS
175MHz CAS 2 FASTEST
FAIL
PASS
175MHz CAS 2 TURBO
FAIL
FAIL
180MHz CAS 2 FASTEST
FAIL
FAIL
180MHz CAS 2 TURBO
FAIL
FAIL
190MHz CAS 2 FASTEST
FAIL
FAIL
190MHz CAS 2 TURBO
FAIL
FAIL
200MHz CAS 2 FASTEST
FAIL
FAIL
200MHz CAS 2 TURBO
FAIL
FAIL
Hardly mind blowing results. Corsair claim that the XMS PC2700 will do CAS 2 at 166MHz. They can just get away with their claims, but users wanting extreme overclocking should definitely look elsewhere. Clearly 7.5ns Micron chips - hand picked or not - are not cutting it any more compared to the competition. Ho hum, on to Kingmax. Thanks to Chillblast for sending us out the Corsair sample. Check these guys out, without their cooperation this review wouldn't be here.
PLEASE NOTE THAT AN UPDATED STICK OF CORSAIR MEMORY HAS BEEN RECEIVED AND REVIEWED ON PAGE 10. THE PART HERE IS NO LONGER SOLD.
