8GB DDR2-800 and Vista - Crucial and Patriot DDr2-800 Kits

Monday, 09 July 2007 16:32 Last Updated on Saturday, 19 April 2008 13:22 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

Article Index
8GB DDR2-800 and Vista
Crucial and Patriot DDr2-800 Kits
Road to 8GB and Test System
Synthetic Memory and Game Benchmarks
Real World 8GB Gaming Results
Applications and 8GB DDR2 on Vista

Page 2 of 6

Crucial 4GB Kit:

The 4GB Crucial kit is the most plain looking kit of the bunch. When I requested this kit from Crucial, they stressed several times that this kit was not designed for hardcore enthusiast. It is built for a person looking for a lot or reliable RAM. I'm guessing that is because of the lack of heatspreaders. The best thing about this kit is that it is fully rated and tested to run at 1.8v. Throughout testing this kit was rock solid at 1.8v and we never had any issues with it at all. It performed top-notch in terms of reliability, and stability.

Crucial 4GB DDR2-800

Crucial 4GB DDR2-800 Labels

Crucial has very little information posted about this particular kit, but we have a bit more info for you.

Memory Specs:

Module Size: 4GB kit (2GBx2)

Package: 240-pin DIMM

Feature: DDR2 PC2-6400

Specs: DDR2 PC2-6400

CL=5

Unbuffered

NON-ECC

DDR2-800

1.8V

256Meg x 64

Although this kit looks the most plain, it is the most expensive kit in the roundup. We'll see if it performs like it's worth the money, or if you are just paying for the Crucial/Micron name.

Patriot 2GB DDR2-800:

To bring some balance to the force, we are also including a 2GB kit of DDR2-800 from Patriot in this review. Although more and more people are moving to 4GB of DDR2 with Vista, many people won't be upgrading past 2GB for a while. We thought that the Patriot 2GB kit would make an adequate example.

This kit from Patriot comes clocked in at DDR2-800 with timings of 5-5-5-12 at a fairly steep 2.2v. There is some confusion with these modules as they are stated to be 5-5-5-12 modules on Patriot's site, but claim 4-4-4-12 timings on the package. In fact, the SPD is programmed at 5-5-5-12 while the actually capability lies in the 4-4-4-12 timings instead. Patriot does this so that they will post in virtually every system without first bumping up the voltage to the modules in order to boot. During testing we ran these modules at 4-4-4-12, while we ran the 4GB kits at their rated speed of 5-5-5-15. That should give the Patriot kit a little extra breathing room.