The need for fast memory has arisen as overclockers push their machines to the limit. Some new faces have emerged including GeIL, now offering memory sticks in speeds greater than DDR466. Today, we have one of their early memory sticks, partly due to my immensely busy schedule, which is rated for the standard DDR400 speed.
5ns GEIL GL2000 Chips (as of now)
Pure Copper Heat Spreader
Lifetime Warranty
6 Layer Ultra Low Noise Shilded PCB
Available in up to 512MB Module
184 Pin
32×8 Low Denisty, Unbuffered
CAS 2.5 6-3-3 2T
2.6V-2.9V
The GeIL memory is wrapped in copper heat spreaders with an almost permanent clipping mechanism. Embedded on one of the heat spreaders is an early Sony-esque looking logo and on the other is a sticker detailing the specifications of the memory. There has been some infamy surrounding these early memory sticks because they were using seven nanosecond chips, rated for only DDR266 operation. This stick is in fact using these chips.
GeIL has been moving from the seven nanosecond chips to the five that is currently listed on their website. The newer memory sticks have been getting much better performance. If you want the better ones, look for a date that is past 5-2002. But sticks with a date of 6-2002 or 7-2002 seem to be using six nanosecond chips from what I can glean.
Since Intel has introduced its long awaited Granite Bay chipset supporting dual channel DDR and with competitors releasing their own soon, overclocking the Pentium 4 is not as necessary. Dual channel memory bandwidth will match the front side bus bandwidth to the processor.
Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz
Albatron PX845PE Pro II
GeIL 256MB DDR400
Leadtek WinFast A250 Ti4400
SoundBlaster Audigy
Western Digital 800JB
Pioneer 16x Slot DVDROM
Turbolink 420W Power Supply
At the fastest speeds the memory was able to hit 190MHz. At its rated speeds, it was able to hit 205MHz. Since both you and I have seen millions of these memory reviews already, I’ll spare you the millions of benchmark results and just include a few. You will also notice that GeIL states that their memory needs some extra voltage in order to work at the specified frequencies. My stick did not need the extra voltage and oddly enough, extra voltage did not give me a higher overclock.
For DDR266/333/380 the memory timings are the fastest possible timings (2-2-2) while DDR400/410 could only be run with more relaxed timings (2.5-3-3). The Sandra results are right around where they should be for such a highly overclocked stick of memory.
The 3DMark 2001SE results shows the effect of greater bandwidth in a 3D application. The scores ramp up nicely from the old standard DDR266 to the memory’s maximum overclock of DDR410. (UPDATE 1/3/02 10:13PM PST): the 3DMark scores are looking kinda odd now that I look at them again. Running the benchmark again and will update. (UPDATE 1/3/02 10:48PM PST): ran DDR266 again, but it came out with the same result though it seems low.
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