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Like building a house on a solid foundation, there
is just no substitute for good memory, when it comes
to performance computing. Virtually all of the
various components in your PC access main system
memory at some
point or another. Whether you are an avid
"Over-Clocker" or the conservative type,
there is nothing more essential to system stability
than a robust Main Memory Subsystem. Having
memory installed that is capable of handling the
high end clock rates of today's modern system
busses, can be the difference between "rock
solidness" and an irritating or sometimes
catastrophic "BSOD" (Blue Screen Of Death)
system crash.
These
days SDRAM manufacturers are punching out memory by
the bucket load for the ever hungry consumer
market. However, as with anything else, there
are varying degrees of quality and performance
within this space. The "PC133"
standard and the memory that supports it, made
133MHz. Front Side Buses for the host processor, a
reality. Furthermore DDR SDRAM capable of 2X
the bandwidth of PC133 memory, is coming to
fruition. However, we expect that PC133 SDRAM
will be the mainstay system memory for some time to
come.
So, with
that said, what separates the trash from the
treasure in PC133 memory? We're going to show
you two suppliers of top notch PC133 SDRAM, in the
following pages. We'll put them head to head
to compare their quality, performance and overall
bang for your buck.
Before
we move on, we would like to extend a hearty THANKS
to the good folks at OUTSIDE LOOP COMPUTERS
for supplying HotHardware with these modules. OSL
has been a sponsor of H.H. for a long time now and
we are proud to have them on board.
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| Specifications
Of Our Two Challengers |
| There
is SDRAM and then there is
"QUALITY" SDRAM |
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|
Corsair
On The Left / Mushkin On The Right (click)
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Corsair
PC-133 CAS2 SDRAM Module
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168
Pin Unbuffered DIMM (Dual In Line Memory
Module
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64,
128 or 256MB versions
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3.3V
Operating Voltage
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CAS
(Column Address Strobe) Latency = 2
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SPD
(Serial Presence Detect E2 PROM
On Board
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Discrete
SDRAM Chip Sources: Micron, Toshiba,
Samsung
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Mushkin
High Perf PC133 Rev. 2 SDRAM Module
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| As
you can see both of these modules have very similar
specs. As a result, this review should be a
solid "apples to apples" comparison.
The PCBs are almost identical here and the only real
differences are the chip suppliers used to populate
these modules. It should be noted that both Corsair
and Mushkin
do not manufacture the SDRAM on these modules but
rather use major sources like Toshiba,
Micron
and Samsung
or in the case of Mushkin's module, Mosel
Vitelic. However, regardless of the chip
suppliers used, both Corsair and Mushkin guarantee
performance according to their own published
specfications that you see above.
On the other hand, it
is also widely known that there are very subtle
differences between SDRAM chips amongst the various
suppliers. At the time this article was
published, Mushkin was only supplying Mosel SDRAM
chips on their "Rev. 2" modules.
Corsair could in fact supply any of the three
sources listed above. However, our module was
populated with Micron SDRAM and most all modules we
have seen for their 128MB PC133 CAS2 sticks, have
the same Micron chips on them. Regardless, we
want to underscore the fact that this article is
based on our findings with the Corsair product that
utilizes Micron SDRAM on the module.
Subtle
Nuances and CAS3 Vrs. CAS2 Performance
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