Crucial Ballistix PC3200 CL2

The fact that Crucial made any kind of move into the enthusiast memory sector came as a surprise to a lot of people. As a company that has thrived on supplying high quality, high value mainstream memory that never attempted to push beyond JEDEC's rather conservative timings, nor to offer any level of support for overclocking of products, the appearance of Ballistix on the market came as a bolt out of the blue.

The Ballistix came packaged securely in a cardboard shipping box and sat in sealed anti-static bags. Each module comes with a rather nice Ballistix sticker and a small adhesive Ballistix badge. Installation instructions are also included.

The modules are finished with a fetching matt gold heat spreader which, to its credit, features the Crucial URL, the Ballistix logo and the batch and part numbers. These appear to be manufactured in aluminium rather than copper as seen on GeIL's heat spreaders.

Adhesive thermal tape is used between the memory chips and heat spreader but they are further secured by a pair of spring retaining clips per module. The underlying PCB is black, or to be more accurate a dark chocolate brown colour. The use of a heat spreader made it impossible to verify the memory chips used but it was quite clear from the little I could see that they were Micron chips.

Testing of the Ballistix modules was a genuine pleasure. Using the SPD setting accurately set the motherboard to run at the rated 2-5-2-2 timings. The rated voltage is an unusually high 2.8v and was set manually from the BIOS.

The performance running at a stock 200MHz was extremely high, matching or exceeding that from our previous roundup winner, Corsair's excellent 3200XL Pro. All tests including the 12 hour burn-in test completed with no hiccups.

Overclocking was an equally rewarding experience, though at SPD I hit a rather premature ceiling of 215MHz and optimism that I'd get much further was fading fast. At 2-7-7-3 I progressed on to 225MHz before easing off again to 2.5-7-3-3, which got me to a more respectable 235MHz, and then 2.5-8-4-4, which eased me to the 240MHz mark. At our usual, much more lax setting of 3-8-4-4 I hit the eventual ceiling of 265MHz. In actual fact I was able to browse windows and run a few benchmarks at around 272MHz but not with any great degree of stability. 265MHz was the highest bombproof setting. Increasing the voltage beyond 2.8v didn't help me progress beyond this level either.

Manufacturer Crucial
Price £91.64 (inc. VAT) for 512MB module
Price per Meg 18p
Rating 90%

GeIL Ultra-X PC3200 Dual Channel2-5-2-2

GeIL has arguably made the biggest splash in the memory market with some extremely aggressive prices coupled with very strong overclocking potential. The Golden Dragon series of DDR modules also won a lot of admirers with its distinctive looks and innovative bare wafer chips.

Ultra-X comes supplied in a very stylish, blue tinted hard plastic case with a slide-opening front panel. The modules are cloaked in anti-static bags and sit in holes cut in a foam packing panel.

Ultra-X is GeIL's assault on the low latency market coming kitted out with - Hand Picked 5ns GeIL Chips rated to run at 200MHz at 2-5-2-2 timings. GeIL also claims to have optimised its SPD for dual channel operation, which sounds reasonable but which I can't easily verify.

Ultra-X comes equipped with a mirrored chrome finish, silver heat spreader that's actually manufactured from pure copper before being tin-plated. Being copper it's very efficient at absorbing heat from the memory chips but, as is common, the chips and heat spreader rely on a thermal tape interface, which however efficient, will impact on their effectiveness. No retaining clips are used in addition to the tape.

When it came to testing, the first thing of note was that setting the BIOS to run using the memory's SPD settings did not set them at their rated 2-5-2-2 and I was forced the set the timings manually to give them a fighting chance.

Once set up manually the modules performed well at a stock 200MHz. Results were consistently on a par with other modules though slightly behind the Crucial sticks when taken across the full range of tests.

The 12-hour burn-in test completed first time and with no problems.

Overclocking the Ultra-X, however, was quite an experience. At 2-5-2-2 I hit the same 215MHz limit that the Crucial modules exhibited, but unlike the Crucial I was able to reach a heady 245MHz at 2.5-5-2-2. Slackening off again to 2.5-7-3-3 netted me an almost crazy 265MHz before finally at 2.5-8-4-4 I made it to an eye-watering 290MHz! To be honest, I had to back off to 285MHz to get the benchmarks to run for a prolonged period of time, but the fact that I never needed to increase the voltage to 2.9v or to lower the CAS Latency from 2.5 to 3 suggests it was the CPU that had reached its plateau not the memory, though at 290MHz I can't imagine there was a lot more left.

For the record, increasing the voltage to 2.9v had no effect on pushing beyond 290MHz, nor did setting it to CL3.

Manufacturer GeIL
Price £211.44 (inc. VAT) for two 512MB modules
Price per Meg 20.6p
Rating 90%