What 2Gb kit for sub 140 notes
- Thread starter VeNT
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Cob said:
Agreed 100%
Cob said:
What tends to happen is that there is a rush of excitement over something that has been on special offer and there is a little burst of excitement about those products.
Cob said:
The PC5300 Ballistix are phenomenal performers for the money. They may be rated at PC5300, but it's a bit like an E6300 is rated at 1.86GHz. If you turn up the FSB, there is no difference between the PC5300 and the PC6400 in reality, just like it's all too easy to clock an E6300 to E6400 speeds. And, in the same way that an E6300 will go on to perform way beyond the X6800 speeds, the Micron-chipped PC5300 Ballistix are capable of PC8000 speeds.
And they look great as well. The clincher for me is that if they break, you send them to Crucial in Scotland and they will replace them in 48 hours. Guaranteed. If you break Cellshock, OCZ, Team, GeIL or Corsair then you are looking at 2-8 weeks with no RAM and international postage rates to send them off to Germany, the USA, Taiwan or Korea. That's a huge advantage for Crucial in my opinion.
in a similar situation to OP was going to go with the GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
£117.49 inc VAT
however - now serious considering the ballistix PC5300.
Should i have any problems with the ballistix on a ds3 with a E4300??
£117.49 inc VAT
however - now serious considering the ballistix PC5300.
Should i have any problems with the ballistix on a ds3 with a E4300??
Caporegime
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if i was getting an E4300 id get the balliastix they will mean you can go 1:1 LINK and SYNCH'ed CPU/MEM FSB and really wind up the timings tight to optmise and balance it.
i went with my crucial and havent looked back since.
i went with my crucial and havent looked back since.
Soldato
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So it'd be better getting the 6400 Ballistix over 6400 OCZ for around the same price?
Associate
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5300 Ballistix, not 6400.
Damm good, almost as hot as the Crucial 10th Aniv sticks, which are handpicked 5300 Ballistix. Easily some of the best overclocking RAM around, especialy since there have been some widely reported problems with the Geil 6400C4 stuff.
My Crucial 10th is at PC2-9136..... DDR2-1142 @ 5-5-5-18! That's pretty much the same spec as the Corsair Domminator PC2-9136C5 (3 clocks short on the Tras..... drat it!). That's the performance of ram that costs over £300, at much less (my 10th wasnt that cheap, £200 ish... should have bought earlier
, still good value though)
Not that you are guaranteed to get that type of performance, but DDR2-900 should be in easy reach.
Damm good, almost as hot as the Crucial 10th Aniv sticks, which are handpicked 5300 Ballistix. Easily some of the best overclocking RAM around, especialy since there have been some widely reported problems with the Geil 6400C4 stuff.
My Crucial 10th is at PC2-9136..... DDR2-1142 @ 5-5-5-18! That's pretty much the same spec as the Corsair Domminator PC2-9136C5 (3 clocks short on the Tras..... drat it!). That's the performance of ram that costs over £300, at much less (my 10th wasnt that cheap, £200 ish... should have bought earlier
, still good value though)Not that you are guaranteed to get that type of performance, but DDR2-900 should be in easy reach.
booyaka said:
No. In many ways it's a better combination as you can run tighter timings at the slightly lower speeds you'll be running.
At 400FSB you should be able to get 4-3-3-8 with the Crucials (maybe 3-3-3-8, but I wouldn't guarantee it) which is worth 2-3% on memory constrained benchmarks like SuperPi.
Soldato
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simonnance said:
Why not?
Soldato
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p4radox said:
I've found the 6400 for £122.77
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550+ with my higher binned 10th Aniv, though that is at 5-5-5-18.
Soldato
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Cob said:
Either that or it could be a lot of people still have a rather nasty taste in thier mouth from the whole DDR1 Ballistix failure rate debacle a year or two back, some people were going past 4 sets replaced before they got a decent set! I know this is DDR2 now, and nothing like the DDR1 most likely, but the name alone would make me think twice given I remember that period fairly well.
Cob said:
Micron D9 GHM are the best DDR2 RAM chip´s available for now
( Ballistix PC2 5300/6400-Team Extreem PC2 5300 and 6400-Cellshock 6400-GSkill 6400 HZ- Kingston HiperX 8500 etc)
(and matched with an ASUS P5b delx for ex. it´s a "killer" combination)
that ranking speaks for itself
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=121680
Last edited:
VeNT said:
Crucial, as has already been pointed out, is the trading arm of Micron Technologies. AS has already been pointed out, the Micron performance chips are the best currently available and are used in all the fastest RAM sets.
The reason you were able to get 3 or 4 replacement sets of Ballistix DDR when they had a duff batch was that the RMA centre is right here in the UK. And they replaced every stick of DDR until everyone had a good set - true?
They shouldn't have had to, but they put their hand up and admitted it and they sorted the problem out.
If you had bought GeIL or TEAM or Cellshock you would have had to send it to Korea, Taiwan or Germany for the RMA (at your cost) and then wait for it to come back.
Now, I genuinely believe that Crucial Ballistix PC5300 is the best performance RAM for the money available at the moment.
I also believe that if you have problems with it it will be replaced faster by Crucial than by anyone else.
If you want to pass up on the best cost/performance deal because Crucial screwed up last year and you're still bitter about it and can't move on, then buy the GeIL, G.Skill or OCZ. It's all good, it's just not as good as the Ballistix.
I see dozens of posts every day that say things like "Recommend me a board. I had a socket A Gigabyte board 3 years ago and it was carp. Please do not recommend me a Gigabyte board". Things move on. It is vital that we all tell the truth about our kit so duff rubbish doesn't get bought by too many people and the good stuff is recommended. Every manufacturer makes duff kit once in a while and the important thing is to learn who takes responsibility for it and who doesn't.
EVGA have sold loads of users (myself included) an 'enthusiast' motherboard that doesn't really overclock quad-cores very well. It is a generic NVidia design and about 6 manufacturers are selling the same board with the same problem. Only EVGA is taking all the boards back, at their own cost, and replacing them with new ones that do overclock Quads. That buys them a lot of loyalty from me.
I also had 3 sets of Ballistix PC4000 in 3 weeks and finally I got a good set. When Micron realised there was a hole in their QA testing, they closed it and that particular problem shouldn't arise again. If another unforseen issue arises then they'll take it on the chin again, I'm sure.
It's not how you screw up - it's how you fix it, and EVGA and Crucial have fixed their issues with me pretty well, I reckon.