Wintec Industries was founded in 1988 and is one of the world’s leading original equipment manufacturers (OEM), of memory modules, and a top supply-chain service supplier for value-added resellers (VARs). They currently have trade association memberships in such organizations as JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council), EIA (Electronics Industries Alliances), CFA (Compact Flash Association), SD Card Association, MMMCA (Multi Media Card Association) and Bluetooth SIG. They recently entered the “extreme” market of memory to cater to those of us who want the most bandwidth and high overclocks.
Although AMD currently does not offer a DDR2 platform and probably won’t for sometime, Intel is leading the way. With all of Intel’s new processors using DDR2 the need for high quality DDR2 is becoming more of a concern for overclockers. Most of the major manufacturers have already rolled out their line of DDR2 and are continuing to improve upon their technology.
What are the major differences between DDR1 and DDR2?
Current DDR uses a 2-bit prefetch while DDR2 implements a 4-bit prefetch, prefetching is gathering data before it is needed. This basically means that every bus cycle 4 bits of data will be transmitted instead of 2. Of course this probably leads you to wondering why the overall bandwidth isn’t doubled as well. The simplest answer I can give is because information is only requested half as often. DDR2 also utilizes a FBGA (Fine Ball Grid Array) while DDR uses a TSOP-II (Thin Small-Outline Package). The FBGA uses a find pitch ball arrangement on the underside of the package, where the TSOP has leads protruding from the sides of the package. Because the contact point of the FBGA is on the bottom of the package, the package can be made smaller than the TSOP.
Features New To DDR2
There are also a few new features for DDR 2 that are good improvements over current DDR. With original DDR excess signal noise is eliminated using terminating resistors that are built into the motherboard. In DDR2, resistors are still used eliminate the excess noise, however these resistors are built into each of the memory chips on the module which keeps them closer to the source of the noise. This is intended to reduce interference within the chip. Posted CAS and additive latency are two new technologies that work together to prevent data collisions within the memory as well as better utilizing the data transferring more read/write within each clock cycle. Off-chip driver calibration (OCD) is another new technology which provides the option of tightening the variance of the pull-up and pull-down output driver at 18 ohms nominal. This increases the signal integrity and the system timing margin. The table below is a summary of the major differences between DDR and DDR2.
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DDR
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DDR2
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Data Bus
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64 bits
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64 bits
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Data Rate
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200/266/333/400 Mbps
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400/533/667 Mbps
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Bus Frequency
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100/133/166/200 MHz
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200/266/333 MHz
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DRAM Frequency
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100/133/166/200 MHz
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100/133/166 MHz
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Package Type
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TSOP-II
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FGBA
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Densities
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256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB
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256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB
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Voltage
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2.5 volts
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1.8 volts
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Prefetch Size
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2 bit
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4 bit
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Burst Length
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2/4/8
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4/8
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CAS Latency
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1.5, 2, 2.5
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3+, 4, 5
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Write Latency
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1T
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Read Latency-1
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Packaging
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TSOP (II), TBGA
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FBGA
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Specifications
Capacity: 1GB Kit
Number of Modules: 2 x 512MB
Bandwidth: PC2-5400
Configuration: 64M x 64
CL: CL 4-4-4-10
Organization: 64M x 8
ECC/REG: Non-ECC
PCB Height: 1.181″
Rank: 1 per module
Chip Count: 8 per module
Pin Count: 240-Pin
Module Type: DIMM
Voltage: 1.8v
Profile: Normal
Warranty: Lifetime
This memory is a 1GB (2x512MB) kit of dual-channel, 1-rank DDR2 that operates at 675MHz. It has been Tested to run at the low latency timings of 4-4-4-10 at 1.8v. The packaging is very simple and similar to most other memory on the market today.
The memory is covered by a black aluminum heatspreader to dissipate heat from the components. This memory uses Micron DDR2 chips which are typically good when it comes to overclocking. Instead of using 16x32MB memory chips Wintec decided to use 8x64MB chips which means one side of the memory is empty. I really like the overall look of the memory since I am a big fan of black and white.
For the testing I did a clean install of Windows XP and applied SP2 so that there wouldn’t be anything unnecessary on the system. I installed the newest drivers for all my components and patched Windows from Windows Update. The following is a list of drivers and important patches: NVIDIA unified driver 5.10, NVIDIA Forceware 66.93 video driver, and DirectX 9c.
Test Bed:
- Abit AA8-3rd Eye
- Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz LGA775
- 1GB Wintec Amp-X DDR2 PC5400 (4-4-4-10) & Corsair TWIN2X1024-5400C4PRO (4-4-4-12)
- Albatron PCX5750 (425MHz/500MHz)
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive
- Everest Home Edition 1.10.106
Memory Benchmark – A synthetic benchmark that yields a MB/s bandwidth of a memory subsystem for both reading and writing. This test is useful for comparing the relative efficiencies of memory performance of two systems using the same memory type. Or it can be used to compare performance differences of two different types of memory on the same system. Higher bandwidths are better.With this testing the Wintec memory is a little lower on bandwidth scores in both the read and write testing compared to the Corsair XMS2 Pro. The difference isn’t huge but at the same time it isn’t insignificant.
Sisoft Sandra Professional 2005 1.10.37 – Memory Bandwidth Benchmark – A synthetic benchmark that yields a MB/s bandwidth of a memory subsystem. This test is useful for comparing the relative efficiencies of memory performance of two systems using the same memory type. Or it can be used to compare performance differences of two different types of memory on the same system. Higher bandwidths are better.
With SiSoft the difference between Wintec and Corsair was much closer. The difference with the int and float testing was less than 100 MB/s.
Futuremark PCMark2004 – All tests (excluding graphics) – From Futuremark, the makers of the popular 3DMark graphical benchmarking series, PCMark focuses on the application side of benchmarking. It is a synthetic benchmark that tests an overall systems performance in operations such as file conversions, scientific calculations, web page rendering, memory read/write and file transfers. This program outputs a raw number score which can be used to compare different systems overall performance in applications (graphics tests disabled). Higher scores are better.
I only chose the system performance and memory sections of the benchmark for this review. With this benchmark Wintec outperformed Corsair by a little in the memory testing and overall score.
RealStorm Benchmark 2004 – The RealStorm Benchmark 2004 is a software rendering benchmark which will measure the performance of your pc-system. Processor speed, memory speed, cache type/size and motherboard chipset will have big effect on the performance of your system. This benchmark is NOT for comparing the speed of your 3D-accelerator, as it won’t use it at all. The resolution was set to 640×480 and the rest of the settings were left at their default.
The results from this benchmark were basically identical, the Corsair memory got 4 more raymarks than the Wintec.
Unreal Tournament 2004 – Unreal Tournament 2004 is a multiplayer first person shooter that combines the kill-or-be-killed experience of gladiatorial combat with cutting-edge technology. Although this benchmark does stress the video card more than the other testing it is always good to see how a system performs as a whole when it comes to gaming. The resolution was set to 640×480 and Bench’emAll was used to run the benchmarking. The following maps were run and the average was calculated from them: dm-rankin, as-convoy, and br-colossus.
Like the results from RealStorm Benchmark 2004 these results are extremely close. The difference between the two is not significant enough to make any real difference and could be the result of many different factors.
With Wintec being so new to the “extreme” memory market they have yet to prove themselves when it comes to overclocking. The memory held up pretty well with normal benchmarks compared to the Corsair DDR2 but lets see how it does in the overclocking arena. I left the timings at the stock 4-4-4-10 to start with and slowly increasing the FSB while adding more voltage to the CPU, memory, and northbridge as needed.
My final result was a FSB of 260 taking my 2.8GHz Pentium 4 to 3640MHz. To achieve this overclock I flashed the BIOS to version 18 and set the DDR voltage to 1.8v, northbridge to 1.50v, and CPU to 1.3375v. I did not lock the PCI-Express bus but did lock the PCI to 33.33MHz. If I increased the FSB any higher than the 260 would cause the system to become unstable. This was the case even when adding more voltage to everything possible.
Keep in mind that the tRAS on this memory is 10 while on the Corsair it is 12. Although this isn’t going to cause much if any difference in benchmarking it might during overclocking. Relaxing the memory timings with this memory to the same as the Corsair XMS2 Pro still didn’t change anything. Overall not a bad overclock with this memory, however clearly it doesn’t beat out Corsair.
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Conclusion
While Wintec Industries is pretty new in the extreme memory sector of things they are already doing a good job in my opinion. This memory was basically on par with Corsair with all of the benchmarking. In most cases the Corsair memory was a little higher, however the difference was extremely minor.
When it comes to overclocking this memory faired quite well, especially since the tRAS latency was a step below Corsair at stock speeds. Of course at this point you still need to decide if you want to move to DDR2 which is still a bit immature because of surrounding technologies. However if you are switching to a LGA775 setup you will have no choice but to purchase some DDR2, in which case this memory would be a good choice.
I like this memory a lot and though it doesn’t offer some of the “neat” features other memory companies add, such as LEDs and things like that this is still a great product. You will also pay about $70 less for this memory compared to to the Corsair XMS2 Pro memory. I am going to give it a 10/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Wintec Industries for making this review possible.
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Cons:
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