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Thread: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

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    Question Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Interested in anybody's experience or opinions on these two sets of RAM:

    http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpar...B9BFBAA5CA7304

    and

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%...S-4-4-4-12-DHX


    Thanks!

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    I was going to mention Crucial have the advantage of UK based RMA should the RAM fail in a few years time. But Scan offer Corsair UK based RMA by looks of it (if purchased from Scan).

    I'm surprised how prices have increased for DDR2.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Personally, I would go for the Ballistix, as they're cheaper and Crucial have a 2nd to none customer service rating (though I should also say, I have never had any probs with Scan either).

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Go with the cheapest.
    Kalniel: "Nice review Tarinder - would it be possible to get a picture of the case when the components are installed (with the side off obviously)?"
    CAT-THE-FIFTH: "The Antec 300 is a case which has an understated and clean appearance which many people like. Not everyone is into e-peen looking computers which look like a cross between the imagination of a hyperactive 10 year old and a Frog."
    TKPeters: "Off to AVForum better Deal - £20+Vat for Free Shipping @ Scan"
    for all intents it seems to be the same card minus some gays name on it and a shielded cover ? with OEM added to it - GoNz0.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    My vote is for the cheapest, too. Both have superb customer care and both will (should) perform equally well.

    I remember when RAM was £35 for 4GB :/

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Yeah, its gobsmacking how much it has gone up. I used Crucial RAM some years ago, and I know they have a very good rep.

    Crucial it is then!

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Just noticed the same Ballistix RAM available on Ebuyer:

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143844...w_order_by=SRF

    Its cheaper still than Crucial's own site. Any problems buying through ebuyer instead of direct from Crucial?

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Shouldn't be any problems.
    I would actually say look for cheaper stuff which will be cas5, the difference is not great and on a 775 system it makes very little impact.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pob255 View Post
    Shouldn't be any problems.
    I would actually say look for cheaper stuff which will be cas5, the difference is not great and on a 775 system it makes very little impact.
    I agree with that, however, I'm looking for something that will have some overclocking room in it, ie I can drop the timings to CAS5 and push the clock up. I tried some Corsair PC8500 in my IP35 board, and couldn't get it to work.

    (I'm looking to change the 4 1GB sticks I've got for 2 2GB).

  10. #10
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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Faster memory doesn't really help with socket 775 systems. It's better just to overclock the processor and drop the CPU FSB:Memory multiplier. To be honest, there isn't much benefit from going from 4 1GB sticks to 2 2GB, especially when DDR2 prices are as expensive as they are now. Perhaps look around for some 1066Mhz if you really want.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Well the problem is that the 4x1GB RAM I have now doesn't work very well, a known issue with these boards. I've actually already tried some 2x2GB sticks of 1066 RAM, and when I could get the board to boot, there was a noticeable difference in in-game performance (which I was NOT expecting). What I was expecting was that with just 2 sticks, the board would be more capable of supporting higher CPU clocks.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    I've had that board before, just up the northbridge voltage and it should allow you to boot 100% and make your system more stable if it isn't.

    I'm just hoping you're overclocking correctly because with 2x2GB sticks of 1066mhz RAM you should be able to boot everytime. From my experience I found the Abit IP35 Pro the most stable board I've ever tried. It even beats the DFI boards I've tried although they come second. It's a real shame Abit's gone

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    What game was you playing ? As from my own experience and the statistics offered up by many a hardware site it offers negligible differences.
    Kalniel: "Nice review Tarinder - would it be possible to get a picture of the case when the components are installed (with the side off obviously)?"
    CAT-THE-FIFTH: "The Antec 300 is a case which has an understated and clean appearance which many people like. Not everyone is into e-peen looking computers which look like a cross between the imagination of a hyperactive 10 year old and a Frog."
    TKPeters: "Off to AVForum better Deal - £20+Vat for Free Shipping @ Scan"
    for all intents it seems to be the same card minus some gays name on it and a shielded cover ? with OEM added to it - GoNz0.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ulti View Post
    I've had that board before, just up the northbridge voltage and it should allow you to boot 100% and make your system more stable if it isn't.

    I'm just hoping you're overclocking correctly because with 2x2GB sticks of 1066mhz RAM you should be able to boot everytime. From my experience I found the Abit IP35 Pro the most stable board I've ever tried. It even beats the DFI boards I've tried although they come second. It's a real shame Abit's gone
    I've found this board to be the best I've ever owned. Very stable, good to OC with. I did a lot of voltage, clock, multiplier etc tweaking, and couldn't get it to boot consistently with the PC8500 RAM. It would often get stuck at "C1" on POST. This tended to happen most on a cold boot. I've seen this reported elsewhere. I wasn't even overclocking at this point. When the board would boot, it would run perfectly.

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    Re: Corsair Dominator or Crucial Ballistix?

    Quote Originally Posted by Terbinator View Post
    What game was you playing ? As from my own experience and the statistics offered up by many a hardware site it offers negligible differences.
    Ordinarily I would entirely agree with you. So, a bit of background is in order.

    I'm running Windows XP Pro 32 bit, on an Abit IP35-Pro motherboard.
    Originally I had installed 2x1GB of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 RAM running at CAS4. Everything was fine. Set DDR voltage to 2.1v, and it runs at 800Mhz with 4-4-4-12 timings no problem.

    I then decided to add another 2GB, because games like CoH are memory hungry, even though under 32bit Windows, you can't use all of that RAM. (I'm also intending to switch to Win 7 64 shortly). I installed another 2x2GB of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 RAM - exactly the same as the previous ones...so now I have all four RAM slots filled. As has been documented numerous times, running 4 sticks of RAM can be problematic. No matter what I did I could not get all the RAM to run at 800Mhz with 4-4-4-12 timings. Of course, that doesn't actually matter that much, as the speed difference is negligable as has been pointed out. Its more the principle!

    In games such as CoH and GTA4, I also experienced alot of stuttering. Everything would be smooth, then the game would slow, stutter for a while. I never connected this to the RAM at all, I thought the graphics card I had (a GeForce 8800GTX) might be to blame.

    Anyhoo, I decided to swap the 4 sticks of 1GB RAM, for 2 sticks of 2GB RAM, to reduce the load on the board, provide more head room for overclocking, and space to expand the RAM if needed. So I bought 2x2GB of Corsair XMS2 PC8500 RAM. I thought that it ought to work, and being rated at 1066 would be great for OCing.

    When I installed it, as previously mentioned, I had lots of problems getting the PC to boot properly. However, when I did get it to work, it was rock solid. When I played GTA4 and CoH, I found to my great surprise that the stuttering I had experienced previously was gone. So when I say "performance improvement", I don't mean higher FPS, just that the games didn't stutter any more.

    I've put this down to a couple of things: 1. the board struggling with 4 sticks of RAM (and yes, I've tried adjusting MCH voltages and the rest), 2. The two sets of RAM I bought are different in some fashion, enough to cause problems.

    I don't believe the reduction in stuttering was because the RAM was PC8500. I think it was because it was 4GB of RAM in 2 matched sticks working properly, instead of 4GB of RAM in 4 sticks not working properly. For me I think its worth the "side-grade" to 2 sticks of 4GB. Because of the problems I had before trying to get PC8500 RAM working, I think I'll stick of PC6400.

    Sorry for the essay!

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