Crucial Ballistix 2GB PC2-8500 Memory

[Kougar]

Reviewer: Mr. Robert "Kougar" Tanner

Date Published: June 4, 2007

Excerpt: "There hasn't ever been a better time than now to be in the market to buy a kit of high performance DDR2 RAM. Unless having been hiding under the proverbial rock it has been hard to miss that prices of high-end DDR2 RAM has not just fallen, they've simply collapsed. Kits priced at over $300 (Such as the RAM in this review!) can now be had for just a third of the price, and some very good but not quite as fast kits can be had for even less than that. Is Crucial's 1067Mhz Ballistix a good choice for your next RAM upgrade?"


http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revimages/memory/Crucial%20Ballistix%208500/ballistix_240pin_350x90.gif

Please feel free to post your comments and questions here!

Link To Review (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1107)

[Kougar]

Review Update:

After some quick & dirty testing with a new P35 chipset motherboard I can confirm the 965P chipset was the issue with overclocking this RAM. I have also discovered Nvidia's chipsets are no longer the only ones capable of extreme RAM frequencies... :grin:

Verified by a single complete pass of Memtest 1.7v, stock 5-5-5-15 timings were used in all runs:

1120Mhz @ 2.2v (stock)
1150Mhz @ 2.3v
1200Mhz @ 2.35v
1220MHz @ 2.4v


Due to the inherent risk of damaging the modules I did not test above 2.4v, but for those users that desire it these modules will perform even higher with more voltage, although likely not much. I will update the review itself with this info later today. :icon_tiphat:

[Chakka]

Great review and follow-up. It seems that this particular ram, the pc2-8500 is the best ram from one of the best companies. I have always used crucial cause their support is unmatched. Usually its no questions asked if your memory fails memtest. I just RMAd my pc4000 ram and it was almost 2 years old...cross-shipped...and within days the trade was made.

Kougar, I would be interested to see how high you can get the pc2-8500 ram to run at 3,3,3,8 and 4,4,4,10 on the p35 chipset if you have a few extra minutes to spare.

Also, does the p35 series a 1T option?

[Kougar]

Gigabyte does not offer 1T vs 2T options I am afraid, that is on a manufacturer by manufacturer basis... ASUS might offer it on their P35 boards.

I will make a note to check regarding timings, I couldn't do anything with 4-4-4-12 on the DS3 however I think it is safe to say the P35-DQ6 can likely do more. I am in the middle of a 24 hour Orthos run (Will post in another thread), so I will test the RAM again when that finishes. :)

[Kougar]

Just as an update, I no longer had any issue running the RAM at 4-4-4-12 @ 1068MHz with 2.35v, again Memtest stable. Lowering the timings further proved to simply be unbootable, though I did not test lowering the tRAS any further. I'm a bit miffed there is no TRC timing in the P35-DQ6 BIOS, this would help performance more than simply the tRAS once the tRAS is around 11-12.

I should have reiterated what I said in the article... with Gigabyte boards the "Option 2" memory setting in the BIOS must be set to retain total stability. I am convinced that any Micron D9 based RAM when clocking above 1,000Mhz will need to use Option 2.