question about corsair xms ram

i dont have any idea how corsair xms ram is any better than typical value ram. would it be a waste of money if i got a 512mb stick of corsair xms, even if i dont overclock?

also, is it ok to have one value ram attached to my motherboard together with an xms, just as long as they are both ddr400?

Why, do you have an XMS stick now? What is it?

Yes, generally the XMS has historically had the best ICs Corsair could buy. Case in point is the XMS3500 series, which harbor the vintage BH-5 of 2002, where Corsair cherry-picked 40% of Winbond's production.

However the later XMS stuff may contain many different types of ICs, but they are considered the best Corsair has to offer. If you are not overclocking, the Value ram stuff is OK, and Corsair has a good RMA policy.

xms isnt nessiarily just if you want to overclock. say you have a fast *** athlon 64 but want good ram that runs at ddr 400 for it. the xl series auto spd boots with 2-2-2 but the value ram can be 2.5-3-3 or worse. in that case, where the cpu lives and dies by its memory latencies, the xms will produce better results even at stock.

I agree, a lot of the enthusiest ram is often overpriced. all your really paying for is the ensurance that they WILL run this and this. with value ram, its all about luck on that. but stock for stock, i wouldnt say the xms is worthless.

about combining memory on your board. for every stick you add, that stick can only run as fast as your slowest stick. if you have value ram, no xms would not be worht it since the value ram cannot keep up to the xms timings. you would have to lower them to your other stick. if you have xms, it would be the same thing for adding value ram. im not sure if spd auto sets to your slowest stick or not, you might have to do that manually.

In regards to this business of mixing ram, I had interesting results mixing Crucial PC3200 with Buffalo PC3200. Both use mT -5B C ICs, but the Crucial could only do 3-3-3-5 >240 and the Buffalo could do 3-2-3-5. I mixed sticks and was surprised to find I could run 245, 1:1, 3-2-3-5 with both sticks! Memtest clean and 3D stable. You would think the ram would only run as fast as the slowest stick.

On a side note, just last night I began experimenting with 4x512 MB ram in my IS7-E, and I swear I can run 5:4 higher up (to the tune of 286, 5:4, 3-2-3-5 at 2.8 VDIMM). You're talking 2 GB ram here. It could only do 280 earlier with two sticks. Than I realized the two sticks I added were actually a better pair (when tested individually) than the original two, so it may have raised the fsb at 5:4!

Moreover, at max fsb where the sticks are borderline, the ram is 3D stable with maybe 2-4 #5 errors showing up. My theory is the errors are buffered by four sticks, and thus are not as fatal to 3D. It seems to me this 865P board prefers to run all slots full. Nothing concrete, just a feeling I have.

At 1:1, not surprisingly I could get 4 mhz higher with 2x512 MB. But my results running 4x512 MB sticks have exceeded expectations. Across the board, 3D performance is significantly smoother with 2 GB (see my other posts, I mainly did this to test the effect on Doom3).