Value Geil Vs Twinmos ch5 (1Gb Dual Channel)

[raxmus]

hey, im real stuck between these two 1gb dual channel packs. the price difference is neglidgable (about $35) but i dont want to spend any more money than this. the ram seems pretty similar in perfomance but im not sure. ive heard geil horror stories but then again it does come with a lifetime warranty.

1gb dual channel pack

geil value - blue aluminium heat spreaders, life-time warranty

cas 2.5 6 3 3

twinmos - winbond ch-5 chips

cas 2.5 7 3 3

any ideas - i think theres probably a lot of people confused about this choice at the moment.....

thanks

[Spoon]

I've got some similar Geil ram, it's great, but apparently its sometimes good, sometimes not. Mines PC3200 (single channel). I can run it at 214FSB, faster timings all round. I do give it a wee bit extra juice but meh.

[mird-OC]

the GEIL value stuff doesn't really OC well, from my experiences anyway. it's good enough, just not stellar overclocker. see if you can source some a-grade winbond, it's relatively cheap and OCs pretty nicely.

[Buster]

What fsb are you aiming for?

[raxmus]

im not sure what you mean by a grade? do you mean a good batch? if thats what you mean its just that most shops wont go to the trouble of finding out for you.... thanks for the advise though. at the moment im sort of leaning towards the geil due to the heat spreaders and the life-time warranty.

[raxmus]

im getting a p4 2.6c so i should be able to get a pretty good oc. i cant afford top notch corsair etc so i just want to get as high as i can for less than $350. i could get 512mb dual channel but i really want the extra. im definite about 1gb.

[Siris Le Osiris]

Corsair is damn expensive i spent $600 on mine, and that was cheap :eek:

Heatspreaders in themselves dont do much but look purty, but yea if it was between Geil and Twinmos id pick Geil and hope for a good batch.

Might wanna do some googling to see how each cope with dividers, 875 and 865 chip sets can be picky about multis ;)

[Buster]

Originally posted by raxmus
twinmos - winbond ch-5 chips

cas 2.5 7 3 3
At those timings my particular 512 mb single stick is good for ~210 fsb.

[mird-OC]

Originally posted by raxmus
im not sure what you mean by a grade?
it's basically stuff with CH-5, just not twinmos. ask around, most e-tailers should know what you're talking about.

[Dartani0n]

Originally posted by mird-OC
it's basically stuff with CH-5, just not twinmos. ask around, most e-tailers should know what you're talking about.

Why not Twinmos ?

[mird-OC]

Originally posted by Dartani0n
Why not Twinmos ?
because for one reason or another the more recent batches of twinmos sticks (i.e. anything you can buy in NZ) haven't been performing as well as their predecessors.

[raxmus]

thanks for all the info guys, i have ordered the geil and will just have to hope its some of the good stuff. im getting it for $335 inc gst at pp.co.nz. they seem a little slow on replying to emails but its a busy time of the year and they seem really good otherwise. once ive got my system up and running (hopefully within the next week or two) ill post my results with this ram.

[Siris Le Osiris]

Theyre slow because theyre not open again till tommorrow lol.

[raxmus]

they are actually open and taking orders; they just wont be shipping until the 5th.

[Siris Le Osiris]

That still means quite a few of the staff were on holiday hense slowness :P

[Dartani0n]

This isnt exactly on topic, but I dont think its worth starting a new thread for. Since this thread is ram orientated.. I thought Id share the first impressions.

Today I received 2 x 512 Mb Kingmax DDR433 ram.

They are not part of a dual kit, but I was prepared to take the risk that they are "identical" enough to run in dual mode on an Nforce2 board. Plus I asked the tech support guy of the importer to try 2 of them in the same board I have (Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro) overnight running 3Dmark01 to give me a preliminary idea of any problems, ran fine.

First thing I did was plug both modules in, set the memory timings to CAS 2.0 2-2-11 @ 333 Mhz to ensure it worked OK. Ran a full pass of 3Dmark01 (that used to crash out when I ran 2 cheapie modules).

At the moment its running at 440 Mhz (FSB 220 Mhz) with CAS 2.5 3-3-11. I will try lowering the memory timings and increasing the FSB more.. but its already out of spec for DDR433 ram.

I know for $500 I could have got some flash Mushkin ram that will do CAS 2.0 at 466 Mhz or something, but thats a *lot* of money. This 1 Gb of ram cost less than $300.. seems to be good value for money.

[raxmus]

nice one on the kingmax dude. i looked at the same ram at ascent and was really tempted to try it but i was too worried that the performance between the sticks would be too different. i got my dual channel geil "value ram" kit yesterday but am still waiting on the video card and hard drive before i can run some benchmarks. im really impressed visually, in the pics the heat spreaders looked painted but they are in fact blue anodised aluminium. in a few days ill see how they actually perform.

2 x 512mb ddr400 dual channel
2.5 3 3 6

[Dartani0n]

Nice! What board are you running?

If its an Nforce2 chipset, have you read that thread about the Tras (I think its Tras, the last/highest one) setting performing better when set to around 11, as opposed to 6 or 7 ? Check out the 3 links in the following thread.. the bottom one, from Mushkin's website, explains why.. something about that setting relates to how long the memory can be accessed for.. kind of like the amount of time a page is open in a book.. if its not open long enough you dont get to read the whole page (the other settings related to how fast you are reading, or rather, the delay between reading each word, less is better) and then you have to wait till the page is open again to finish reading it.

http://forums.overclockers.co.nz/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11547

I havent actually benchmarked to try and measure a difference between Tras 5 or 6 or 11 etc.