3000, 3200, 3500 - named or noname

[Cabal]

I am having a hard tme deciding on what DDR SDRAM to get for my new nforce board and 2100+. I am wanting to o/c this board so need some ram that will handle it.

Is it worth paying the extra for say corsair or kingston when I can get the same PC rated ram for cheaper from some noname supplier?

Will decent PC3000 be able to handle 200mhz ok or is it a gamble?

I am looking at getting 256MB HyperX 370MHz PC3000 DDR Non ECC GENERIC DIMM CL2 VALUERAM for $128.95

or

maybe some noname 256mb PC3200 for $100

or

GEIL 256MB PC3200 5ns GL2000 Chip ULTRA CAS 2.5 Aluminium Heat Spreader for $125

[Cabal]

I have just read a heap of reviews on the Geil ram and everyone seems to rate it very highly apart from the fact it needs quite high voltage to run stable.

Anyone know the difference between these 2 chips?

http://www.geilusa.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=18

and

http://www.geilusa.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=12

Only difference I can see is Enhanced SPD for Dual Channel DDR motherboards whatever that is.

[I.R]

There's really no difinitive answer. Some people are lucky and get some noname POS that kicks ass....... some people are unlucky and get a good brand that is utter crap.

Don't just look at the price, look at other features like warranty or guarantied "enhanced timings" etc.

I can only speak about the ram that I have used which is Mushkin Black PC2700. I've had no problems with it so far. I have two sticks in a KT333 (which is supposedly crap for stability) running @ 166Mhz 2-2-2-5-1 with no problems (so far). I've had one stick up to 183Mhz so I'll try that out with two later this arvo.

just my 2c ;)

[SilverPriest]

Another vote for mushkin.
I've got 2x256mb sticks of their pc3200 black series.
If you plan on using kingston hyperx in an nforce2 board, beware...... it may not work.
As for geil well.......go figure ;)
My advice to you would be to buy some brand name ram like mushkin.
Avoid the cheap and cheerful stuff.

[Cabal]

What do you mean by your Geil comment SilverPriest?

[I.R]

Check out "[H]arls Vs Geil: frist blood" thread and "So long thanks for all the fish" ;)

[Method]

the diff between the two are that they will work on a dual channel ddr board. Some dont for some reason.

I have geil and i am real happy with it, got some good timings out of it i think and i upped the V by 0.1.

For the price its damn good imo. Lifetime warrenty too.

[Grrr!!]

I have two 512MB sticks of Mushkin Blue DDR333. They run fine at 185MHz ... a vote for mushkin here.

As for Geil ... it seems to have a lot of issues.

[Wibber]

I have a 256mb stick of oem samsung pc2700 (TCB3) does 210 2-2-2-5 at 2.8v

:p

I allways buy cheap ram, if it sucks, sell it again and you dont loose much $, and then can try another cheap brand.. ;) still I avoid PQI and MTec like the plaque

[AcurA]

Waiting on a Mushkin 512DDR3200 Black... sick of walking back and forth to letter box lol.

[I.R]

Originally posted by AcurA
Waiting on a Mushkin 512DDR3200 Black... sick of walking back and forth to letter box lol.

Who'd you get it off??? I Paid for mine on Wednesday day so the money went in to starlytes' account on Thursday and it was sitting out side my door Friday after I got home from work.

Starlyte R0>< :D

[AcurA]

Starlytes - they're on order and it might take bout 10 days for delivery :( U prolly got my stick ya bugger - hand it over :P

[starlyte]

Memory for Nforce boards

This is what ive discovered so far with the Nforce 2

Generic no name ram works fine.

Mushkin - havnt seen any problems, But theres not alot out there on the Nforce 2 yet (in nz anyway) - They do have Dual DDR memroy aswell, but not yet in NZ

Corsair seems to work fine, The Twinx stuff is great

Geil - The standard single sticks seem to have issues, Especially in Asus Nforce boards, not so much with other branded Nforce

The Dual DDR from Geil works a treat :) and its no more expensive then buying two single sticks - in fact i think its cheaper

Kingston - Havnt tested

The Nforce chipsets have always been picky - Theres probably a reason for it :)

My theory (correct me if im wrong)
Runing Two single sticks of memory will cause problems unless you are lucky. I dont think you will run into problems with cheap ram due to that ram not being the best performers, As soon as you ramp up the speed and up the timings of the memory, You will run into problems!

This is a list of manufacturers who have released Dual DDR
Corsair
Geil
Mushkin
OCZ
Crucial

If im not mistaken the above 5 manufacturers produce top quality ram. - They are the ones facing problems with the Nforce 2.

SO.. My suggestions for Nforce 2 systems. - Top being favourite, bottom being least favorite

Geil - They have good priced Dual DDR
Mushkin - Its just great memory :)
Corsair - They have outstanding memory and Dual DDR
Generic - if your going cheap and not going to overclock

I will repeat. Standard sticks of Geil wont work very well

My 2 dollars :)

[Tiggerz]

Originally posted by starlyte

This is a list of manufacturers who have released Dual DDR
Corsair
Geil
Mushkin
OCZ
Crucial

If im not mistaken the above 5 manufacturers produce top quality ram. - They are the ones facing problems with the Nforce 2.
[/B]

Actually no. These guys actually go for a lower standard. They use the CMTL Certification process which is a lesser standard than JDEC. Of course, no-one with DDR400 ram or Dual DDR400 or Dual Channel DDR400 has passed the JDEC yet.

If you want the highest quality standard, you need to get ram that has passed both the Intel Validation tests and the JDEC tests. But then you will be spending heaps.


On the Kingston testing. I have 2 x 512Mb sticks of DDR333 which comes with a lifetime warantee.

I just managed to get a new stable high-score in sisoft memory benchmark of 3376. Considering benchmark DDR400 gives 2900 in sisoft. Ye olde kingston valueram does quite well.

To get this I used an old Intel trick of slowing the ram down, rather than speeding it up.. i.e. I used 2.5-3-3-8 2.5v with 421Mhz memory bus.

I had to bump my 3.06Ghz up to 3.634Mhz to get that speed tho.