GeIL appears to have done a good job with their Golden Dragon PC3200 Dual Channel memory. It ran at it's default 200MHz speed without problems at it's rated CAS settings. I was even able to set the Game Accelerator on the IS7 motherboard to the "Street Racer" setting. I was a little disappointed that I could not use the F1 setting. I was only able to push the memory with these aggressive settings to 208MHz before I had to begin relaxing them. I could go to 212MHz CAS 2-7-4-4 with the Turbo Game Accelerator setting, 216MHz CAS 2-7-4-4 with the Auto Game Accelerator setting, and 224MHz CAS 2.5-7-4-4. You notice I mentioned the CAS 2-7-4-4 setting above a couple times. For whatever reason even though the Golden Dragon PC3200 Dual Channel memory is rated to run at, and can run at, CAS 2-6-3-3 the SPD is programmed to CAS 2-7-4-4. While the difference between these settings is minimal in performance it is odd that the SPD is incorrectly programmed.
I purposely choose to run the benchmarks at these particular settings to illustrate a point. With today's motherboards showing exceptional memory performance many overclockers are running the CPUs below the maximum speed they could get out of them because the want to use the smaller 5:4 memory ratio. Yes, memory performance is important to your system's overall performance BUT as the benchmarks I used show CPU speed is still the primary component to get the best performance out of your system. Some people are even spending more money on their memory than on their CPU. Unless you have a money tree in the back yard this is crazy. If you must spend the money get a faster CPU. Dual Channel DDR is sadly going to be short lived on the Intel platform. The next big motherboard chipset from Intel is going to support the newer Dual Channel DDRII specification making your current memory useless and is due in about 6 months. I know there is always something new on the horizon but this new chipset is going to make many things in your system obsolete, more so than any other chipset in recent memory. I'm not telling you to not upgrade to Intel's current chipset or to not use Dual Channel DDR memory but just be fiscally responsible with the upgrade. This is where GeIL comes into it; GeIL Golden Dragon PC3200 Dual Channel memory can be found for at least $30 or $40 less than the other high profile memory manufacturer's kits and significantly less than PC3500 and PC3700 kits. As I have tried to point out the performance difference with the higher bandwidth is minimal. If you have tons of money to spend or just really need a couple hundred more points in 3DMark2001 you probably will want to look somewhere else. But if you like most of us you may want to check out GeIL's latest offering.
Even with my comments above about the GeIL memory I could not give it one of the coveted OCA awards. This is due to the numerous complaints I have received about GeIL's customer service from our loyal OCA readers and forum junkies. Because of this I recommend if you decide to pick up this memory to get it from a retailer with a good reseller rating. That way IF you have any problems with this memory you can deal with the retailer and circumvent any potential problems dealing with GeIL.
I would like to thank Eric from GeIL for providing the GeIL Golden Dragon PC3200 Dual Channel memory and look forward to seeing what new products they will have in the future.
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