GeIL: your opinions

[Holtzclaw]

Hi everyone,

I've been looking at components for a new system for a while now and the latest decision I have is what ram? I'm aiming for 1gb, (was 2, but I thought to cut costs i can always upgrade later). I've found some cheap GeIL value ram at OcUK and would like to know how does it perform against the likes of Corsair/OCZ etc. Would anyone recommend this ram at all? It's quite a bit cheaper than the Corsair stuff, but I've also read it's overclocks well - has anyone done this?

I'm not too hot on understanding timing issues by the way, but I have read that amd platforms like "tighter" timings, and as I'm looking at amd, would I be better placed going for Corsair or something else?

Also, 1 stick or 2 for 1Gb? If people recommend 1, then I'm a bit stuffed as i can't find a single 1gb Geil stick, well, value stick anyway.

Many thanks in advance.

[Mithrandir]

Hi,
I've ordered my Geils and awaiting for delivery. Hope they are good as I've read many reviews from a US shopping site. The ones I got were 2 x 512mb Value (2.5-6-2-2) Apparently these should be ok for mild overclocking although I'm not planning on OC Yet.

Also if your motherboard has dual ram support then you'd be best to utilise this by having 2 sticks of a matched pairas this would open the 'channels' for much better data utilisation. In other words, I believe that having cars flowing on a dual carriageway would be much quicker than a single lane.

[shaithis]

I have been using and recomending Geil for a while.

The stuff you linked to I have in both of my other systems (Athlon64 and P4) and about 8 freinds of mine also have the same stuff. Runs like a charm and never seen a failed stick of the stuff.

Can't say I have tried stressing the value stuff much but if you check the Geil forums I think you'll find people are pushing them to amazing numbers, especially for something called value

[Thorsson]

You may want to take a look at these guys that I found the other day:
http://www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk/

or specifically the 2x1Gb Geil value Ram on this page:
http://www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk/m...c3200.asp#kits
€236 which I make about £162 including delivery.

2x512Mb is roughly half at €119, with GSkill even cheaper.

[Madafwo]

The Geil stuff I have (Ultra-X) works perfectly, I love the stuff.

A friend has the value stuff in his and loves it. and as a side note it means "Horny" in Dutch and "Cool" in German (supposedly)

For the money the value stuff looks as good as any and heard its got a bit of room in it for OC'ing if thats your thing. As for the amount, if you can stretch to 2gig then go for it. Depends what you are using the new system for of course.

[Holtzclaw]

Thanks for the replies, it seems like GeIL are quite popular (well, from these 4 posts anyhow!).

I have a follow up question regarding the dual channel thing - Mithrandir recommended matched pairs, but for 2Gb, are 2 matched pairs of 512 per module more efficient than 1 matched pair of 1gb per module? Likewise for 1Gb, how come 2x512 is more efficient than a straight 1gb stick?

Not entirely sure how dual channel works (hence the question), so if someone could enlighten me, it would be most appreciated.

Many thanks.

[kempez]

GEIL Value performance is good RAM yes indeedy. A fair amount of it used to be BH5 if you were lucky - mmm - overclocking godness

With 2gb your better off getting 2 x 1gb as 4 x 512mb runs at 2T timings on Athlon systems at the moment (E3 and E6). Basically 2 x 512 is great (especially for overclocking) and 2 x 1gb is also good.

Dual channel gives the CPU twice the theoretical bandwidth of single channel RAM.

Oh its too late for complicated stuff...sorry I have to go to bed!

[Dark Horse]

Dual channel gives the CPU twice the theoretical bandwidth of single channel RAM.

Oh its too late for complicated stuff...sorry I have to go to bed!

Unfortunately in practice the difference is less than a 5% increase

[directhex]

i use a pair of these - 1GiB GeIL Value sticks http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...8559&GroupID=0

pretty sweet for the money

[kempez]

Unfortunately in practice the difference is less than a 5% increase

Which is why I said theoretical But having said that I would still run my RAM in dual chennel: whats the point of not doing it?