Date:
Thursday , August 02, 2007
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Corsair DDR3 Product Preview @ 2GHz

We showcase the future of DDR3 using Corsair’s next generation DDR3 memory that scales to 2GHz clock speeds. We also discuss pricing, real world expectations, and the DDR3 memory module market in general in our first DDR3 memory article.

Introduction

Corsair has been the memory company HardOCP has looked to for years when it comes to building quality sticks of RAM. Undoubtedly they have a lot more competition than they used to from the likes of OCZ and Kingston now days. All three companies are building good products with solid overclocking features.

HardOCP has been lax in its focused coverage of RAM over the years, and this is not because we are not capable of testing the products, but rather the DDR and DDR2 market has been somewhat "boring." Don't get us wrong, we use a lot of products and comment on them in our testing, but finding sticks that are much more capable than what is specified on their packaging is not as easy as it once used to be. Once RAM builders figured out that they needed to move faster than Intel and AMD when it came to high performance RAM, we started seeing the chips that made up those sticks of RAM being cherry picked for speed and performance. Most of you are very aware of the common market today in which “overclocked” RAM is sold. In fact, it has gotten so common and so reliable it is not even looked at as an overclocked product any more. Corsair markets DDR2 up to 1250MHz (PDF Spec Sheet), which is just a tad over the official “top” clock speed of DDR2 at 800MHz.

What has gotten HardOCP interested in RAM again is of course the new DDR3 (DDR3 PDF Spec Sheet / DDR3 Press Release). Much like the DDR technology before it, we are seeing a trade off in the realm of timings and frequency. As frequency ramps we once again are sacrificing the timings to slower settings. To many computer enthusiasts, this is a big deal as we want both high frequencies and lower timings.

I think calling this a RAM “review” is a bit overboard. This article and the ones that follow it are going to be compact looks at DDR3 products in the market, so for the time being we will refer to them as “Product Spotlights,” this one will be a “preview” as of writing it this product is not openly available. As we move forward with these articles and get a wider feel for the current DDR3 market we will surely be including more comparisons and contrasts between products. But my overall view on this is to not publish 8 page RAM “reviews” when a couple will do if we cut to the chase.

Faster DDR3

Even though DDR3 is very new, we are already seeing some incredible working clock speeds out of products on the market. Just like we have seen with DDR and DDR2, companies like Corsair, OCZ, and Kingston are already pushing the ICs to the extreme limits, checking reliability, and rating their own products. As of writing this, Kingston has already announced an “Ultra Low-Latency” DDR3 part that is rated just a bit above the stock 1333MHz clock speed.

Back in June at Computex we saw Corsair show off the “World’s Fastest DDR3,” and you will notice in those pictures (shown again below) that we ran a quick benchmark that showed an amazing score of 8545 megabytes per second transfer rate. This was with an overclocked E6850 Core 2 Duo at 3GHz and the DDR3 RAM at 2000MHz with 10-10-10-24 timings (CAS-RAS to CAS- RAS Precharge-Cycle Time).

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After running that benchmark we even cranked up a couple of sets of Prime 95/Orthos running large ffts that stressed the memory and to our amazement, the system worked just fine for a few minutes until a Corsair rep saw the abuse we were heaping on their only demo machine and made us stop. (That’s what they get for leaving me there alone.) Needless to say that was very impressive, but what about here in the “real world.”

Of course, all of this makes us wonder where exactly DDR3 is today and what exactly can you buy.