Unamed pc2700 better than Corsair pc3200?!?

I have been running a stick of pc2700 (cl2.5) quite happily at 180 mhz at cl2. I needed 2.95v in the dram, and I felt that if i went to 3.05 i might get 190 or more. But even with the large heatsinks i have on the memory i was worried about 3.05v.

So I bought some corsair 3200 which claims to run at 400mhz with 2226 t1. It arrived and I eagerly stuck it in the machine. Now consider this thing is supposed to do 200mhz fsb you will be amazed to find that Its unstable at 2.95v at 150fsb!

I left the standard heat disipators it comes in and i dont think its a temp issue even though it does get slightly hotter than my pc2700 with the huge heat sinks.

So whats the deal here? Did i get a lucky stick of pc2700 and an unlucky pile of crap corsair?

Maybe you did get just that kind of Scenero. Just RMA The Corsiar.

These are some popular ones ppl talk about here, the price difference is as high as 50%, but performance difference is just a few % for PC3200, 5ns chips:

TwinMOS 256 MB PC3200 5ns chip ~ $59
Winbond 256 MB PC3200 5ns chip ~ $75
OCZ 256 MB EL 3500C2 4.5ns chip ~ $86
Kingston 256 MB HyperX 3500C2 5ns chip ~ $87
Corsair 256 MB 3200C2 (6ns chip ??) ~ $84
Corsair 256 MB 3200 LL 5ns chip ~ $92
Corsair 256x2 MB 3200 LL TWIN 5ns chip ~ $193 (two)
Corsair 256 MB 3500C2 5ns chip ~ $93
.....

In my opinion, when the 5ns DRAM is mature, they all perform within a few MHz difference, i.e. within 3%. This was very different than 6-12 months ago when 5ns chips were not yet mature, ppl willing to pay a premium.

For the already overclocked memory, how much more can we get. Recently there are lots of 5ns DRAM chips that can handle 200 MHz FSB with good price. AMD CPU can be oc by 30-50%, but memory seems to be at most around 10% (if lucky). I realise how good and generous AMD CPU are !!!

One may argue about service, rma, and guarantee timing for the premium in price (50% ?).

Even for Corsair, recently I got a brand new stick that is 20 MHz under-spec and thousands of memtest errors at stock frequency and timing. Proabably this is no common, but is still a gamble on time and money.

Many ppl here are getting good experience with twinmos w/ windbond chips and even the twinmos w/ twinmos chips. They seem to be able to run at least to 200 MHz at cas 2 if not more (even it spec at cas 2.5). I think $59 is much less risky than spending $90 on a PC3200.

umm where did you get that 256 twinMOS pc3200 for $59

kevinN said:

umm where did you get that 256 twinMOS pc3200 for $59

Click to expand...

click here

I don't have first hand experience w/ it yet, but here are some threads.

Link1

Link2

Just look at my sig and see what my memory does.. it's only 6ns too and I'm using 2.78v

What happened to you is 100% possible.. If I were you I'd RMA the Corsair because it SHOULD perform to spec.. PERIOD.

I have a crappy corsair cms pc2700. It won't even run 2.5-3-3-6 under 372Mhz. My crucial pc2100 run at 185fsb very smoohtly. Go figure. I don't think I will pay premium for any corsair anymore. I will stay with cheaper crutial, kingston or samsung.

Ok i got both strips of memory into the 200s after seeing a fault in my bios settings, and then backed off to 195 because my harddisks began to corrupt. Replacing them with my seagates (using wd 80gb x2 until im happy the system is stable) soon, but still wont be going up for fear of cooking my data


Sending the corsair back as my nameless pc2700 is happily running and until i get a bus locked mobo (at least12 months before i splash out again) im gonna sit on the wimpy side of 200 fsb.

Harddisks as an overclock bottleneck.... go figure.