X-bit labs

Memory Market Overview: March 2005 (page 2)

Category: Memory

by Anna Filatova

[ 03/18/2005 | 06:51 PM ]

It is interesting that the second most active memory company in February appeared Corsair, which used to be a pretty conservative company a few years ago. Nowadays the XPERT series from Corsair is very well-known among computer enthusiasts. We have already reviewed this solution equipped with large digital LEDS displaying the memory modules status and working parameters. You can check out our review here.

In the end of the month they expanded this product family with the new TwinXP1024-3200C2 product line (the memory capacity and the working speeds are evident from the name, which C2 stands for a very important memory timing parameter: CAS2). The timings for this memory type look as 2-3-3-6 for regular CPUs, and 2.5-3-3-5 for AMD Athlon 64 with the built-in DDR memory controller.

In the middle of February Corsair also reminded us of themselves with one more useful solution: 533MHz DDR2 SO-DIMM memory modules for the new mobile Intel Sonoma platform. These modules have nothing outstanding about themselves: their speed and capacity (256MB-1GB) are pretty standard, which makes them a well-balanced practical solution. A bit earlier Transcend also announced similar new products.

However, most of the news is still coming from overclocking fields. Here we also got a word from Kingmax. They announced Hard-Core DDR500, which was claimed to be working stably at frequencies over 525MHz. in the DDR2 field we hear from A-Data and GeIL. A-Data promised to start producing DDR2-667 and DDR-800 in March, although I would expect the latter solution to start appearing in mass quantities in H2 2005 at the earliest. GeIL announced in February their 533MHz DDR2 memory modules with faster timing settings of 3-3-3-8- instead of the standard 4-4-4-12.