With the release of all of the DDR333 motherboards the overclockers have something faster and capable of handling fast quality RAM. DDR333 is classified as 2700, which is rated for 333MHz. If you are a true overclocker and want the faster RAM you can get either 3000, which is rated for 366MHz, or 3200, which is rated, for 400Mhz.
This Particular RAM is from a new company in the RAM business which is going to cater to those high end users who want the fastest best RAM on the market. Their website is not currently up right now but it will be XtremeDDR The RAM comes with Samsung chips which are known for their ability to do very high FSB and overclock very well, we will see later in this review if this holds true.
Specifications
- PC3200 ( DDR400 )
- Samsung B3 -6ns chip
- unbuffered
- 256MB single sided 184 DIMM
- 3-6-3 2T Timings
- CL 2.5
The module and comes with green heatspreaders which will help dissipate the heat from it, especially when you pump some more voltage through them. The heatspreaders come in blue, purple, gold, silver, green, and red so if you are color coordinating your PC your RAM can match too.
The module is a single sided stick which usually have a better time overclocking compared to those which are double sided. You can see that the heatspreader is making good contact with the RAM so that heat does not build up.
Test Bed
- EPoX 8K3A+
- 1.2Ghz Thunderbird
- XtremeDDR 256mb PC3200
- 3DPower Geforce 3I will be using the following settings for the testing of the RAM on my EPoX 8K3A+ because they are the most agressive and will produce the best results.
- DRAM Clock: 166
- SDRAM Cycle Length: 2
- Bank Interleave: 4 Way
- Precharge To Active: 2T
- Active To Precharge: 5T
- Active To CMD: 2T
- DRAM Burst Length: 4
- DRAM Queue Depth: 4 Level
- DRAM Command Rate: 1CMD
For benchmarking with a FSB of 133 I set all of the timings to the most aggressive which were described on the previous page because it would be able to handle it no problem. As you can see the results are really good, but this RAM can do a lot more than 133.
I then kicked the FSB up to 166 and rebenchmarked with SiSoft, as you can see there is a big improvement in bandwidth when at 166 FSB.
I then tried to see how high I could get the RAM at the most aggressive settings, I had to up the voltage to 2.80v to get it to 175 FSB but it got there and the results are good.
I was unable to go any higher than 175 at cas 2 so I had to back it down to 2.5 and press forward. I upped the FSB to 200 and rebooted, the AGP tore because of my EPoX motherboard but after POSTing it was fine. As you can see even at cas 2.5 there is improvement in the bandwidth, if it was able to do cas 2 it would be much higher. Even though it won’t do cas 2 at 200 FSB it is still running faster than the specs which it is designed to do.
I then went for the highest possible FSB with the RAM and was able to hit 210 FSB with all of the settings at the most aggressive and at cas 2.5, if you have a better motherboard you should be able to get more out of this RAM too.
Conclusion
Because of the overclockers of the world, products are being developed more and more everyday to suit their needs. This RAM is really good especially if you are looking to take your system to the max. The RAM will overclock better on another motherboard I believe, I was able to push it to 210 even though the AGP would tear because of EPoX’s divider problem. If you are looking for high quality RAM that will let you overclock your system to the fastest possible I would really recommend this RAM to you, not only will it do 200 FSB with no problem but it has Samsung chips on it so it should be able to do a lot more. I would like to thank Paul from PC PitStop for sending this over to review, head on over and pick one up.
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