Recently OCmodshop was sent a brand new product from Crucial Technology, a 1Gigabyte kit of its latest Ballistix Tracer PC4000 modules. Crucial, a division of Micron, produces memory products that cross the gamut from the high performance enthusiasts level Ballistix modules to SD flash memory.
Crucial has had a line of Ballistix PC4000 on the market for quite some time. They have been tested by hardware review sites and the enthusiast community alike, and can be touted for performance as well as excellent hardware compatibility.
Although the particular modules we are reviewing today are a bit special. Crucial has taken their bulletproof PC4000 modules and revved them up a notch to target a consumer who is part of an emerging trend in enthusiast computing, case modders, who like a little show with their go and look to blend style and flare with performance. These memory modules are clad with small LED’s (light emitting diodes) to display memory usage and some just for bragging. How’s that for cool.
Packaging
The memory modules came in Crucial’s traditional plain white box. Breaking the seal we find: a 512meg memory module, a multi-lingual installation manual as well a 6” Ballistix sticker. We are reviewing a 1Gigabyte kit of this memory so each stick was contained in a different box. The modules are sealed inside of a static bag with pertinent information such as make/model, latency and batch codes.
Note: Ballistix memory isn’t sold in matched pairs like many memory manufacturers sell theirs. Matched pairs are geared towards those using hardware capable of dual channel memory configuration. Paired modules are tested together assuring that they will work at the same speeds and the same latencies, together. Crucial however claims that any two exact Ballistix memory modules rated at the same speeds and timings will work together at their specified ratings. Coming from a company as reputable as Crucial I would tend to believe this.
Features
As stated before these modules are the standard Ballistix PC4000 modules at the following ratings: DDR500, PC4000, CL2.5-4-4-8, 2.8v. They feature a slick jet black PCB and they are clad in custom semi gloss black aluminum heat spreaders with gunmetal clips. Painted onto the spreaders are the Crucial.com logo, the orange and yellow Ballistix emblem and an orange sticker marking the batch code and serial numbers of each module.
At first look these look like normal memory modules, but if you look very closely you notice the additional LED’s mounted across the PCB. On the bottom edge of the memory, there are 4 surface-mount LED’s. If you check Crucial Ballistix Tracer website (here) they are calling these “Ground Effects” LED’s, coining the phrase straight from the custom car industry. There are 4 LED’s on each side of the PCB, and when the modules receive power they emit a blue glow that backlights the memory. Aptly named by Crucial.
In addition Crucial has added an array of 16 LED’s across the top of the PCB. These LED’s, according to Crucial, interface with a custom circuit that monitors memory bus activity and lights the array to indicate that usage. This is similar to what Corsair has implemented with their XMS Pro line of memory which featured usage lights integrated into the heat spreader. They would light up in a line from green to red according to usage, giving a quick bar graph interpretation of usage.
What is neat about these however is that they interpret bus usage into a tracing light pattern in the array, and the speed at which the light trace along the array is proportional to the bus activity. Again, aptly named by Crucial. So the lights should theoretically be moving slowly when the system is at idle, and when you boot into your favorite game or do some memory benching, the lights should be constantly moving. That’s one way to one-up Corsair as these should be very flashy if you want to draw some attention to your case at a LAN or just put something unique in your case.
Unfortunately at the time of testing I did not have any other PC4000 modules available for a direct head-to-head comparison. However, these modules are the same Ballistix PC4000 modules without the LED’s. So for all intensive purposes the performance testing included in this review is to verify that the modules do run at their rated speeds. Although, being as curious as I am I went ahead and tested the modules at various speeds and timings to give an overall picture of the memory’s versatility.
Testing of the Crucial Ballistix Tracer memory was conducted on the following system:
- MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum s939
- AMD64 3200+ 90nm Winchester
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256meg
- Western Digital 36.7GB WD360DG Raptor Drive
- Western Digital 160GB 1600BB 2MB Cache
- Lite-On DVD-RW
- PC Power and Cooling 510 Deluxe
Speed and Timings
The following table represents the highest memory speeds and latencies attained with the memory in dual channel mode. Note: These are maximums, not fully stable speeds.
|
Timing
|
Max Speed MHz
|
|
2.0-2-2-5
|
218
|
|
2.5-3-3-6
|
271
|
|
2.5-4-4-8
|
273
|
|
3.0-3-3-6
|
283
|
|
3.0-4-4-8
|
290
|
|
3.0-5-5-9
|
294
|
Just from looking at this table you can see that the Ballistix PC4000 chips are very versatile and can offer a wide range of speeds and timings to anyone who likes to get every ounce of performance out of their hardware.
At the stock timings I was able to boot into windows and do limited testing at 273 MHz (DDR546), 23 MHz higher than the memory’s rated speeds. Not bad for unmatched pairs. I was also able run the memory at CL2-2-2-5 up to 218 MHz, and reach a maximum speed of 294 MHz at CL3-5-5-9 (although I may have been hitting the maximum speed of the board as I have never had this board that high before). One thing I would like to note however is that I was unable to get the modules to run at a 1T command rate. So all testing was done at 2T command rate.
After some testing I found the sweet spot of this memory with my setup to be 268 MHz at timings of CL2.5-3-3-9.
Memory Bandwidth
After discovering that this memory was capable of CL2-2-2-5 timings, I decided to compare against PQI Turbo PC3200 with Samsung TCCD memory chips, some of the fastest memory available. The PQI memory runs at CL2-2-2-5 and a command rate of 1T instead of Crucial’s 2T. Unfortunately this memory tends to be a bear to work with on many nForce3 chipset boards so comparison is limited only to 200 MHz.
CPU speeds were held constant at 2 GHz, with the exception of 268 MHz settings. The CPU had to be slightly overclocked as only full step CPU multipliers are available on the AMD64 platforms. So results for those settings may be on the high side if compared to results when the CPU is not overclocked.
Timings tested were as follows:
- PQI Turbo PC3200
- 200 MHz x10 – CL2.0-2-2-5 -1T – 2.8v – HTTx5 Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000
- 200 MHz x10 – CL2.0-2-2-5 -2T – 2.8v – HTTx5
- 250 MHz x08 – CL2.5-4-4-8 -2T – 2.8v – HTTx4
- 268 MHz x08 – CL2.5-3-3-10 – 2T -2.85v – HTTx4
In the following tables (SC) denotes Single Channel configuration and (DC) denotes Dual Channel configuration. The Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000 definitely scales well across the board in Everest Home benchmarks. It even keeps up with the ultra fast PQI Turbo running at a 1T command rate. Not bad if you would like lower speeds and tighter timings.
The scalability is still present in SiSoft Sandra 2005. Although it seems that the PQI pulls away a bit in these tests putting up much better numbers at 200 MHz. The faster command rate may be helping the PQI in these tests. One word keeps coming to mind in terms of performance and that’s versatility. If you want to try different speeds and different timings, then these modules should live up to your expectations. Besides being unable to run at a 1T command rate on this particular setup, the modules scale very well at and above their rated speeds of 250 MHz.
Now that we have explored the modules performance, it’s time to focus on why this memory was produced – to be shown off. And what better way to show off a product geared towards case modders, than in a modified LianLi PC6085B case.
The LED’s on these modules are very bright, and emit a very vivid color. The tracers alternate red and green so even when moving slowly they are interesting to look at. The blue ground effects LED’s will easily accent any case with blue in the color scheme, and even so, aren’t bright enough to overpower any other case lighting or be annoying. They give a nice ominous glow that draws the eye and lets you show off a piece of hardware generally neglected when staring through a case window.
The following are several video clips showing how the tracer modules react to different activities or programs. The videos were encoded using Xvid codec. Use the embedded controls to view a sample video or download the files by clicking the appropriate link:.
Note: In doing basic research online I found an article that mentioned that the memory bus activity lights may be lit up differently on different chipsets. So I walked next door and stuck them in my friend’s computer, an nForce2 Ultra AMD XP machine. To my surprise the lights were lit differently, in a more asynchronous manner than on my nForce3Gb chipset. I also found through testing that sometimes at high memory speeds, the lights were being lit differently as well.
- nForce2 Ultra Bootup – (download) – 466KB
- Everest Home Memory Benchmark at 285 MHz – (download) – 324KB
Sample: Memtest86
- Downloading Files – (download) – 220KB
- Memtest86 – (download) – 274KB
- Everest Home Memory Benchmark – (download) – 152KB
- HalfLife2 – (download) – 274KB
Discussion – The “Eye Candy” Factor
After all was said and done I couldn’t sit idly by and let a product like this go without a quick discussion. I have to say I was quite surprised to see an appeal to such a small market segment, the computer modding culture. Especially from a large company like Crucial, who have gotten so worked up and excited to release a fresh product whose main selling point beyond its normal PC4000 brethren is to be just plain COOL. That is just it, this stuff is cool.
One of the things I noticed after first plugging these memory modules in and booting up was that I couldn’t stop staring at them. I have always been into the mindset about computer hardware that I didn’t care too much what the piece of hardware looked like as long as it was fast. Memory was no exception. I never had a desire for platinum heat spreaders or activity lights on my memory.
Although after having these sitting in my computer for the past several days, I seem to have befallen what I called the “Eye Candy” factor. I’ve gotten used to peering over at my case window to check out my memory activity. Even when testing and benching, I found myself staring at the tracer lights to see if the computer was going to post or had locked up.
So there is a level of real world functionality in such a feature so geared towards the cool aspect hardware.My computer also seems to have gotten quite a bit more attention from those who see the strange blinking lights from a ways away. And again the overall impression even from those not into computers was, “Cool”.
Conclusion
Taking their well performing Ballistix PC4000 memory, and adding some wow factor, Crucial seems to have hit something their Ballistix Tracer modules. Price may be a factor for some, as listed on the Crucial website these modules will cost you $23 per 512Mb more than the regular Ballistix PC4000.
I was thinking to myself however as I was finishing this article, “What is it going to take to make me take these things out of my case now that I am so used to activity lights on my memory?” I don’t know, but I can say I’m looking forward to see more Tracer modules in the future. I can say that if you’re a case modder, or looking for a bit more attention at local LAN’s for your custom built computer, you’re sure to get some heads turning with these in your case, and at no loss of performance.
I am giving the Crucial Ballistix PC4000 Tracer modules 9.5 out of 10 and the OCmodshop seal of approval. I would like to thank Crucial Technology for sending us this memory for review.
Pros
- Good packaging
- Slick black heat spreaders and PCB
- Runs stably at a wide range of speeds and timings
- Ground effects lights
- Innovative LED activity lights
- Overall very cool
Cons
- Costs more than regular PC4000