Overclocking Buyer's Guide - September 2004

DDR2 Memory

DDR2 Recommendation: 1GB Kit (2 X 512MB) Crucial PC2-4200U
Price: $346 shipped

In our recent roundup of DDR2 memory, the Gold Editors Choice went to Crucial DDR2 533. The 533-rated Crucial is based on the top-performing Micron DDR2 chips and it performed at 533 at 3-3-3 timings, which is much better than the rated 4-4-4 timings. We even reached the highest speed that our memory test bed could support at DDR2-686 - well beyond the next speed step of DDR2-667. Even 686 was achieved at 4-4-4 timings, which are again better than the Jedec rating of 5-5-5 at DDR2-667.

Crucial accomplishes all this performance with one of the better prices among DDR2 memory. This is not to say that Crucial DDR2-533 is cheap, but DDR2 has dropped quite a bit in price in the last month. In fact, the current price is not radically different from the better, high-speed DDR that we have recommended.

Frankly, all the memory in our DDR2 roundup reached DDR2-667 speed, so you can shop for DDR2 looking for the best value right now. However, the DIMMs based on Micron memory - from Corsair, Crucial, OCZ, Kingmax, and Mushkin - provided the widest bandwidth in our DDR2 tests. You can select any of them and expect excellent DDR2 performance.

We are currently looking at DDR2-667 rated memory from Corsair, Crucial, and OCZ. These DIMMs may provide even more headroom at the very top of DDR2 performance, but it is too early to say. We will be doing an update in the next few weeks on exactly what you can expect with DDR2-667 rated modules now that we have the Asus P5AD2, which is capable of extending DDR2 memory to its limits.

Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on memory from many different reputable vendors:



If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.