by Anton Shilov
03/20/2003 | 05:55 PM
Memory modules maker GEiL exposed its Golden Dragon Series DDR500 memory modules that can work at enormous frequency in dual-channel mode. Golden Dragon Series DDR500 can provide 4.0GB/s bandwidth and GEiL calls their modules as PC4000, despite of the absence of such JEDEC standard.
<%BANNER[article]%>GEiL demonstrated its new products in a system powered by Intel Pentium 4 CPU at 3250MHz on ABIT’s IC7-G mainboard based on Intel’s 875P core-logic with processor bus overclocked to 1000MHz. Unfortunately, GEiL has not provided any additional information about this test-system as well as has not revealed any benchmark’s results.
Pay attention to the design of high-speed memory modules from GEiL (click on the picture to enlarge it): it seems to be quite complex, moreover, looks like GEiL utilises BGA memory chips for its Golden Dragon Series.
It is fully clear that a pair of DDR500 modules can provide up to 8.0GB of bandwidth in dual-channel mode, what is the highest system memory bandwidth ever seen in desktop personal computers. However, there are a lot of concerns about timings of these modules. Even so-called PC3500 (DDR433) memory modules are programmed in a very “moderate” way to improve stability and compatibility, but what affects performance in numerous applications. We can only guess about timings GEiL programs its products with.
Another big question about this type of memory products is their price. We already told you back in November when GEiL first showcased its DDR466 modules that their price is likely to be higher than the price of PC1066 RDRAM memory. At the moment I believe that the same situation will be in case of DDR500 devices, even though they now are able to show considerably higher performance.