Corsair TwinX 4000 vs OCZ Gold 4000

Memory by KeithSuppe @ 2003-09-27

A simple and to the point review. Sandra memory benchmarks will be used MAX-3 version and WCPUID for verification purposes. Which one comes out on top?

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Introduction


"Oh what a tangled web once weaved; 3.3VDIMM does not deceive...?" It will however make your I/O buffers jump around like a three legged dog at a flea scratching contest. Since reading MS's review of the Asus AV7-333 at Lost Circuits in April 2002, where he states "...all current high-end DDR chips are using internal voltage regulators to reduce the core voltage to 1.8V..."


In the same paragraph he states that the best approach is to raise the VDDQ, not the VDD? What's more confusing then an Enron accounting ledger, is the fact people are benefiting using these high VDIMM's? So why then would there be a need for internal voltage regulation? I've yet to understand how these regulators are doing their job, if memory speed increases with high VDIMM? I think it's important to clarify this issue once and for all, and if someone in the industry would PLEASE give me a call. I'd be grateful to resolve this issue. In the interim, lets see how Corsair's Twin-X holds up against OCZ's Golden egg Dual Channel Gold 4000 series.


The Epox 4PCA3+, is a rabid Canterwood animal. It's the "Lets get ready to Rumble" (intonation included) for memory overclockers of 875 motherboards. 3.30V, is just plain crazy. This brings up several questions. In which direction are we headed with DDR? And will DDR-II share some of DDR-I's voltage characteristics? It's already established the first batches of DDR-II 500, will be high-latency. While that is certainly discouraging news to many, one should realize we’re still going to see very large bandwidth. Think for a moment would you, about how long it took for DDR to become truly efficient at Low Latency. It didn't occur until the twighlight (months) of DDR's life.


And while DDR-I isn't going anywhere soon, we’re all anxiously awaiting DDR-II. No need to worry folk's I'm about positive any self-respecting memory manufacturer already has DDR-II IC's in their warehouses, garages, and strip-mall store-space. Wherever, and whoever’s making high-speed DDR memory these days is most likely in the re-tooling process, if not testing their beta DDR-II already. What does all this have to do with Corsair Twin-X4000, and OCZ GolD4000, everything actually.


These are most likely the end of the product line for DDR-I, and while there may be some PC4200, I don't think there's any IC's to match it's speed, meaning their most likely overclocked DDR500 IC's. As it stands, the memory in our rigs is almost as fast as the memory on our video cards, and unless more BGA is used in motherboard memory, I just don't see DDR-I going much further.

Let's start the testing...
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