Crucial Ballistix PC3200 2x512MB Memory Review
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Crucial, a division of Micron, launched a new line of memory modules aimed at the enthusiast community. Do the Ballistix modules live up to the reputation of the company standing behind them, or will they make you want to, er, go ballistic? Memphist0 does the research to answer your questions about this new option.
Introduction
The Ballistix name may be new to the enthusiast community, but the I'm sure all of you are familiar with the manufacturer behind the Ballistix line. Crucial, a division of Micron, launched a new series of memory to address the needs of the users looking for more performance than what mainstream memory modules provide. This is great news to us because now we have another source, and a very reputable name, from which to get high quality RAM. The Ballistix line competes with Corsair's XMS line and Kingston's HyperX memory modules.
The Ballistix line distinguishes itself by providing tight timings at impressive clock speeds. Separating itself from its competitors, Ballistix memory modules are offered as single sticks allowing more options for upgrading.
As mentioned in previous articles, the outlook for DDR memory was grim. The supply of the venerable Winbond bh5 chips used in many low latency memory modules had dried up. The few memory manufacturers that had any supply of them left sold them off at astronomical prices, and eventually only used modules could be found. Buying a used memory module that has a reputation of users raising the voltage to 3+ volts doesn't sound particularly appealing. All this led to most new memory modules only being able to perform at CAS 2.5 or CAS 3. For a while, this situation was shrugged off as no big deal, given that DDR2 was right around the corner to save the day. Well, Intel's new chipsets, the 915 and 925, were released with DDR2 support and were less than impressive. There was little performance improvement over the previous generation's 865 and 875 chipsets. DDR2 will be the future for memory solutions, but today we look at the memory solution for our current systems.
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