Crucial Tracer 2GB is DDR2 on steroids

CURRENT HIGH END gamer PCs and other 'enthusiast' machines are usually happy with 1GB of installed memory, with the RAM speed making the difference performance wise.

With the new-found 64-bitness in the PC arena, and proliferation of memory-hungry games and multimedia software, vendors are starting to pitch 1 GB memory modules for the PCs, which in pairs give you 2 GB capacity, the maximum a 32-bit OS can address without tweaks. For the first time, these high-capacity modules are also quite fast, not far behind their half-capacity cousins.

Here we have the newest 2GB Ballistix Tracer dual-channel DDR2-667 set from Crucial, one of the big vendors in the 'enthusiast' memory space - just like Corsair XMS Pro series, Tracer has multicoloured LEDs on top of the DIMMs, but not as prominent as the Corsair unit - the only issue is that the uncovered LEDs in this case can be a bit strong emission wise...

We tested the two-DIMM set on both Intel 955XBK high-end mobo, and Abit LG-81 945G-based MicroATX boards. In both boards, it worked fine at 3-2-2-8 at 533 MHz at 1.9 V - pretty much the maximum setting you can get out of DDR2-533 spec right now. Going further up, with voltage at 2.0 V, I managed to run it at 4-3-3-10 at 800 MHz DDR2 - on the 955X only.

In Sandra 2005 memory test with 3.73 GHz Pentium4 EE at 1,066 MHz FSB in the 955X board, it achieved 6,113 MB/s in Integer and 6,045 MB/s in FP mode at CL3-2-2-8 in dual DDR2-533 mode - an excellent result. It couldn't match Corsair's 3-2-2-8 at DDR667 mode though as it can't support that latency. At DDR2-800 with 1,066 FSB 3.73 GHz CPU, it gave a marginal improvement of 6,267 MB/s integer and 6,198 MB/s FP.

Overall, the implication is that, with DIMMs like this one, you can finally have a full 4 GB of ultrafast memory in your PC - with both low latency and high bandwidth. Just make sure you use 64-bit Linux or Win64 to make use of all that RAM! µ