DDR Dual Channel Brands

**Dave_07** · 13-10-2003, 02:24 PM

Hey All

Dose it really matter which brand you go with ?
As far as I can see the major brands are Corsair, OCZ, TwinMOS and Kingston etc etc...
of course they all "say" they are optimised to work with NVidia's Nforce2, and Intel's Canterwood and Springdale chipsets (btw my chipset is Intel's 875P) but then they would say that.
Basically are you going to see any actual noticable performance difference in one brand over another ?

Cheers, Dave

**Muppet #9** · 13-10-2003, 02:29 PM

You will notice a difference if you are planning on overclocking - i.e the more expensive ram (OCZ) will clock further than most other sticks of the same speed.

Crucial or Twinmos is fine if you aren't into overclocking though.

**Austin** · 13-10-2003, 03:02 PM

I disagree (t o a degree). Certainly avoid the generic crap but any branded PC3200 is more than fine. Corsair demand rip-off prices so really TwinMOS are the best with Crucial and Adata being decent alternatives. No need for super low latency stuff nor 'matched' stuff, simply buy 2 sticks of RAM that's ideally got the same brand, rating and of the same size.

**Ice Kay** · 13-10-2003, 03:31 PM

Twinmoss vary aswell as in what chips are used. if they are twinmoss chips they wont overclock as well as twinmoss with winbond chips.

Adata also have winbond chips so can overclock as well as twinmoss with winbond chips.

**RufusKing** · 13-10-2003, 03:37 PM

Im looking into memory too... with an NF7-S MoBo, is this going to be good for overclocking... I was planning to get 2 sticks of it. Any advice?

TWINMOS PC3200 512MB DDR400 CL2.5 OEM 5518

http://www.cpucitystore.co.uk/catalo...roducts_id=138

**Ice Kay** · 13-10-2003, 03:38 PM

find out whether the chips on the ram say twinmoss or winbond as winbond will o/c better.

AFAIK only komplett sell the twinmoss with winbond chips.

**Austin** · 13-10-2003, 03:45 PM

Even without WInbond chips TwinMOS is still top quality at a reasonable price. Since anything more than PC3200 is pretty pointless in SktA (RufusKing) I wouldn't let RAM's o/c'ing be any factor at all. Even so the basic TwinMOS stuff should still have plenty of headroom in it, Winbond (etc) are nicer chips to have but only if it's at a very marginal price premium. For Intel 800FSB mobos I would certainly suggest Adata (CPUcity), cheap and powerful.

**SilentDeath** · 13-10-2003, 03:52 PM

winbond wont overclock better. my 2 sticks of pc2700 reach past pc3200 (samsung chips). the only reson winbond are better is they can handle lower latencys generally.

also make sure both the memchips AND the pcb are branded. theres no point in having samsung or winbond chips on a PQI pcb for example, as pqi are utter rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishe (my pc2700 stick couldnt go past 143mhz... so i took it back and got a nice twinmos one - same chips pc2700, and reaches 420ddr)

also, on AMD systems, FSB makes only tiny performance diffence once u go past pc3200 and it depends on cpu speed aswell, slower cpus it doesnt matter as much, and imo the differnece between 5-2-2-2 and 7-3-3-2.5 is less than 5% difference (which might make up 1/4 of a fps in a game...)

dual ddr is imo more of marketing hype than acctual real perf bost (for amd systems anyway) as it also only makes ~5% at most

p4 systems need the faster ram, they have locked multiplyers so ram will say how far u can overclock the cpu, also becuase the bus is quad pumped, the cpu can make use of the extra bandwidth given by dual chan

spend the money u save from not buying overpriced ram on somming like a decent gfx card. 9600pro or better

**Dave_07** · 13-10-2003, 04:14 PM

That also puzzel's me, why are pc 4000 sticks available when no mobos actually say they support up to 4000 ??

Dave

**Austin** · 13-10-2003, 04:31 PM

Originally posted by Dave_07
That also puzzel's me, why are pc 4000 sticks available when no mobos actually say they support up to 4000 ??

Because there's demand for it ... and RAM companies who generally run on very low profit margins can charge more for premium RAM ... plus being an unofficial spec allows them more lee-way too.

|SilentDeath| I'd say perf gains from low latencies to high latencies is even less for overall perf, more like 1-2% and less on Dual Channel mobos.

**Dave_07** · 13-10-2003, 04:46 PM

there's demand for it ?
So peep's actually use pc4000 on mainstream mobos or just on dual cpu & server setups ?
If it is used on mainstream boards like a p4 or barton board or somthing like that, how is this done, would't the board just reject the ram or at best not recognise it or read it as lower spec ??

Cheers, Dave

**SilentDeath** · 13-10-2003, 05:55 PM

unless theres some problem with it (not sure why/what - never happened to me before) itll just get detected as normal (unless the mobo reads the SPD which ill ignore..

mobos can be ran easly past what there rated for, it usually just needs a tiny bit higher chipset voltage.. my nf7-s is a rev1.1 and so offically only supposts ddr333, but ive had it at ddr400 for AGES and it shall go higher when i eventally get my watercooling sorted and get time to overclock everything properly

**bluephi1914** · 13-10-2003, 07:54 PM

It does matter with the ram quality... not sure about the brand.. but i guess some brands are synonamous with quality.

i had elixir at first and my dual channel wouldnt work.... but then i returned it and got "Infineon" and it worked fine for Dual channel... however Overclocking remains to be seen... might need some better memeory.

**telfer12000** · 13-10-2003, 08:15 PM

I used 3200 winbond Twinmoss then 3200 Crucial and then 3700 OCZ ELddr on a ABIT IS7-G. At stock, on dual, using Sisoft to bench I got just under the expected dual mem bandwiths for the DDR and then with enhanced timings and other tweaking the relative memory performance order (before the blue screen of death) was, as expected, OCZ followed by Crucial and then Twinmoss but there wasn't that much difference compared to the prices!! I think (about four months ago) that the Twinmoss cost me 40 a stick and the Crucial about 45 and the OCZ about 120 (I didn't pay 120). I suppose what I'm saying is that you will notice a difference with the better brands but wether it's worth paying for the relatively small difference is dependent on the state of your finances

ADDED: One other non-performance point - it's much harder to bork the better branded memory in my experience. The Twinmoss and Crucial stuff is great value but I've borked at least 5 sticks in the last year. I've not yet managed to break OCZ or, come to think of it, any of the Corsair stuff I used to use.

**Austin** · 13-10-2003, 11:02 PM

PC3200 is the fastest official spec for DDR. So all mobos tend to officially announce is support for that speed, but by manually adjusting things you can easily set the RAM to run at a faster speed, in fact with P4's that's almost the only option if you o/c. People may also buy it to be more future proof ... IMHO that's no longer wise as DDR-II will replace PC3200 I guess sometime in 2004. Still if you want that extra few percent then it is best to get RAM that allows you to do so, for the avid o/c'ers only the best is good enough.

**malfunction** · 13-10-2003, 11:10 PM

Originally posted by Austin
(snip) if you want that extra few percent then it is best to get RAM that allows you to do so, for the avid o/c'ers only the best is good enough.

Absolutely - if you want good enough or lots of bang for buck then go for the TwinMOS or something similar (I did). If you want the potential for more - or just bragging rights - go for the best (if you can afford it!)

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