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Super DDR400 from Corsair

by Anna Filatova
08/11/2002 | 11:40 PM

Corsair Memory announced the availability of the new DDR memory modules capable of working at 200MHz with CAS Latency equal to 2 (i.e. DDR400 CL2). The modules are marked as CMX512-3200C2 and CMX256A-3200C2. As you can clearly see, the only difference between the two modules is their capacity, equal to 512MB and 256MB correspondingly. We would also like to point out that DDR400 modules are already offered by some other memory makers, however, most of them support CAS Latency equal to 2.5 or even 3 to ensure stable operation.

That is why you shouldn’t be surprised at the cost of these modules from Corsair: they are assembled from the specially selected memory chips and are equipped with aluminum heatsinks. Also Corsair modules are tested in systems assembled with EPoX EP-8K3A and ASUS P4S533 mainboards based on SiS645DX and VIA KT333 chipsets (Corsair engineers don’t seem to have got SiS648 and VIA P4X400 based solutions at their disposal yet). The settings for the tests looked as follows:

200MHz bus (400MHz DDR);
CAS latency: 2.0;
RAS precharge: 3;
RAS-to-CAS delay: 3;
RAS active to precharge: 6;
Command rate: 1T;
Number of modules in a system: 1.

As we see, despite all tricks, Corsair didn’t manage to create a module working at 400MHz and featuring more aggressive timings (2-2-2-5-1). However, the reduction of CL to 2 is a significant move forward, as all other settings do not have so much influence on the system performance. We should also remember that the memory modules are tested only in some particular mainboards and only if there is 1 DIMM in the system. All these additional limitations make us think that systems built with DDR400 might be not very reliable.

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