Hardware 4GB DDR3 Memory Roundup - Part 1

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...mory-roundup/1

For those of your wanting to jump onto the DDR3 bandwagon and ensure they have enough memory for gaming, in this first part we take a look a three reasonably priced 4GB DDR3 kits ranging from 1,600MHz to 1,800MHz and see what's hot, what's fast and if it's good value.

[Gremlin]

Still, while we understand there is a market for the niche Dominators, we honestly we prefer the better value

me thinks there's either a word missing , a comma missing, an extra we or a combination of the above there

other than that nice article

[impar]

Greetings!

I have the same question as I did last year:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthrea...63#post1590463

What does one gain going from a DDR2 system to a DDR3 system?

[Tyrmot]

You might want to consider revising the sentence

'With the inevitable arrival of Intel's Core i7 and the AMD socket AM3 CPUs in the near future, both of which will be DDR3-based, we decided to take a look at some 4GB kits to get you off the ground - if you were to buy now, they'd still be an investment for future upgrades.'

on the first page...

Intel have just announced that any DDR3 running at greater than 1.65V will fry the processor, so it looks like none of these current generation of DDR3 modules, or indeed any performance/overclocked DDR3 RAM will be suitable for a core i7-based system.

So in fact if you are looking for a core i7 soon, you'd better wait for compatible DDR3 to come out... It looks like any of these modules would prove wasted when core i7 does get released.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by impar

Greetings!

I have the same question as I did last year:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthrea...63#post1590463

What does one gain going from a DDR2 system to a DDR3 system?

Briefly answered on the last page.

[spectre456]

the review was nice and all but i personally think 220 quid is still a lot of money for ram modules (plus the motherboard). I'm sure you can buy 8 gigs of ddr2 (800hmz) cheaper than 4 gigs of ddr3 or you can buy another gpu and sli/crossfire with your current one if you really want that gaming performance increase (but that might push it too far since you'll need a new psu most likely). my point is that i don't think you guys should recommend these since the price is so high and the performance seems incremental. perhaps in 1 year i'll see it as more viable.

[impar]

Greetings!

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

Briefly answered on the last page.

Sorry, but briefly is not satisfactory.
Last year, a DDR2 speed of 800 might had been ok, today the norm is 1066.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by spectre456

the review was nice and all but i personally think 220 quid is still a lot of money for ram modules (plus the motherboard). I'm sure you can buy 8 gigs of ddr2 (800hmz) cheaper than 4 gigs of ddr3 or you can buy another gpu and sli/crossfire with your current one if you really want that gaming performance increase (but that might push it too far since you'll need a new psu most likely). my point is that i don't think you guys should recommend these since the price is so high and the performance seems incremental. perhaps in 1 year i'll see it as more viable.

£123 is not a lot of money if you're looking for performance - if you think "I can get 1,150MHz DDR2 for a lot of overclocking potential for £117" then you look at £123 DDR3 that does 1,980MHz, then that's great value.

What's the point of 8GBs of memory? There's virtually no difference over 4GB unless you've a million programs open or you're running workstation class hardware and software. 4 DIMMs will also hinder your overclocking potential too.

GPUs won't offer performance increases in general productivity either, even if it does obviously benefit gaming.

Performance increases are always incremental, and not everyone just wants to buy 4GB of the cheapest DDR2. You can say the same for GPUs - is a HD4870 worth it over 4850 if it's just ~5FPS in some games? Can you really tell 5FPS from a 5 seconds lower encode time?

[M4RTIN]

i dont really understand the ram orbs.. all performance ram comes with heatspreaders, if you then cant take these off because it'll remove the little memory modules, your left with only being able to fit the ram orbs to generic crap ram. and whats the point in that.. like you say i guess they make more sense to oem's

[zr_ox]

Originally Posted by impar

Greetings!Sorry, but briefly is not satisfactory.
Last year, a DDR2 speed of 800 might had been ok, today the norm is 1066.

Alright Jimmy...keep your pants on!

[Toka]

Originally Posted by Tyrmot

Intel have just announced that any DDR3 running at greater than 1.65V will fry the processor, so it looks like none of these current generation of DDR3 modules, or indeed any performance/overclocked DDR3 RAM will be suitable for a core i7-based system.

So in fact if you are looking for a core i7 soon, you'd better wait for compatible DDR3 to come out... It looks like any of these modules would prove wasted when core i7 does get released.

What this guy said:

Given the uncertanty that has recently been made public (wrt memory voltages vs cpu lifetime...), don't you guys think a ringing endorsment of this sort of DDR3 as an upgrade path for future X58 motherboards is a little, well, I want to say misleading but maybe hopefull would be better?

[Cupboard]

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

At £122 it's a superb price, and at PC3-12800 (1,600MHz) it's only two pints and a packet of crisps more expensive than the £117 PC2-9200 (1,150MHz) OCZ Flex II we looked at in July (where have you been drinking recently? Pray do tell - Ed.).

At a student bar clearly!

Were you deliberately linking to a 404 in the G.Skill page? I presume you were but you never know...
Their Pi heatsink/spreader things do look awesome but its a shame that you have to leave the fan on off for the GT1s, it looks a bit silly imo though the cooling performance is rather good.

It is interesting how little performance difference these modules make, with less that 2

Intersting to see more Samsung chips as opposed to the Micron chips that a lot of DDR2 was based on.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by Cupboard

Were you deliberately linking to a 404 in the G.Skill page? I presume you were but you never know...
Their Pi heatsink/spreader things do look awesome but its a shame that you have to leave the fan on off for the GT1s, it looks a bit silly imo though the cooling performance is rather good.

G.Skill completely closed its second forum after I pointed out the unanswered threads. They did have two - one that linked from the main English site and one from the front page.

Try this for a typical style of response: http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=97

Then go to either OCZ or Corsair forum and compare the difference in reply. I accept the tech's are probably Taiwanese but surely they can find some US/Europeans to help out?