Corsair PC 3200 LL vs Memory solutions DDR 400 CL2

There is a quite noticeable difference between 256 MB and 512 MB. But you won't notice too much difference between 512 MB and 1024 MB in everyday life. Unless, of course, you use 3Dstudio max or Photoshop - then you'll need as much memory as you can cram into the machine.

Nowadays, you also have some CL timings to take care of, where CL2 is best and CL3 is slowest. CL stands for Cash latency [you sure, Fudo? - ED].

We had the opportunity to get a pair of 512MB memory slices working at CL 2. One from Corsair and one from Memory Solutions.

Corsair's costs a little more than Memory Solution's DDR 400 at CL2 and is low latency so we expected it to perform a little better.

We tested:
2x512 MB Corsair PC 3200 Low Latency Memory at CL2
2x512 MB Memory solutions DDR 400 CL 2

On an Athlon 64 platform:
Athlon 64 3200+ clocked at 2000 MHz
Epox 8HDA3+ K8T800 board
Maxtor 80 GB 2MB cache drive
Liteon 48x24x48 CD RW
Enhance 460W PSU
Akasa Athlon64 cooler in Intel box

I tested only PC mark 2002 and Sandra 2003 because of their memory testing capabilities but differences are not so noticeable. Also I tried to overclock CPU and FSB to see which memory is better for this hard task.

As you can see in the table, Corsair with same timings can get few megabytes more than Memory Solutions memory while Memory Solutions will mistily perform better only on CPU side of the testing -- the one that should not be dependent on CPU.

The Athlon 64 has a memory controller inside so maybe memory solution memory found some better way to talk to this CPU and get itself some lead. Corsair wins in both memory tests by a small amount.

The Corsair was much better prepared for stress testing through overclocking. The slice from Memory Solutions would let us overclock the FSB from 200 to 209 MHz maximum -- giving us CPU that works at 2090 MHz. The Corsair was working fine at FSB 216 as well and even beyond with some tweaking, making Corsair, with its passively cooled memory chips, the better choice for enthusiasts.

If you want 1GB of memory and are less bothered about great timings, lowest latency and highest overclock potential, Memory Solutions modules will be great stuff for you. But if you want to overclock and to have best of the best, cough up the extra wedge and go for Corsair. The Corsair comes with a price but may be worth it, if you are the sort that demands more from their machine. In multiplayer games I was able to connect first on server because of my 3GHz CPU and 1 Gigabyte memory and great graphics cards -- one Gigabyte of memory will simply load a game faster. µ