The Race To PC333

The next jump in overclocking is to get memory and motherboards capable of easily running at 166Mhz or better.

This primarily means faster memory, and that means DDR333/PC2700.

For the next few months, we’re going to see two “kinds” of faster memory. That will be:

1) Modules that claim to be PC2700 (and may actually work at 167Mhz) but aren’t officially rated for that speed and

2) Modules that actually meet those standards.

The standards board which determines these things, JEDEC, doesn’t have a PC2700 or PC2100 or PC-anything standard. They call these things DDR333 or DDR266A or DDR266B or DDR200.

So somebody can call a memory module PCWhatever, and since it’s not a standard, it doesn’t violate anything.

Actually, Jedec hasn’t officially published standards for DDR333, either, but there’s a few items it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that have to be in there.

Call it DDR333, PC2700 or whatever, the memory chip should officially have a clock speed of 6ns at a certain specified CAS latency.

For an example of a future memory chip that will, go here and see page 8. Note that these chip will have a -6 or -6T speed grade as opposed to the current -75 speed grade.

Now the -75 may be able to run at 167Mhz, but that’s quite a bit above its rated speed.

For an example of what you’ll see today I’m sure go here, type in “HY5DU28822AT-K” in the Customer Part Number Search, download the PDF, look on pages 41-2 (look under the -K column), and you’ll see
just what the memory chips used in the only “PC2700” being marketed today are actually rated for. You’ll see that these memory chips are actually DDR266A (that’s the higher-end) chips.

Now they may well be able to sustain 167Mhz, but it’s the same situation as any other well-made DDR266/PC2100 memory chip.

If you’re an overclocker, you probably want something that can do a good deal better than 167Mhz, and high-end DDR266/PC2100 chips are unlikely to do so.

You’re going to want chips officially rated at 6ns, and they aren’t around yet. So hold your money until they are.

Email Ed