It seems like yesterday that everyone's favorite person was quoted in saying “640K of memory should be enough for anybody.” It is now common to see 512MB or even 1GB of memory in your desktop computer. Even with this, it seems like however much memory you have in your system is still not enough. Anyone who works with graphics or movies will know the feeling. Your performance drops as you run out of memory and hard drive swap space is started to be used. But what do you do? Do you just live with it? No you go looking for a solution.

Mushkin's 2GB-Kit HP3200 may just be the solution. Mushkin has taken two 1GB modules of their High Performance memory and packaged it into a dual channel kit. I know, I know, I am drooling too. So let's take a closer look.

Specifications:
Latency   2-3-2
Frequency   400MHz
Parity   Unbuffered
Voltage   2.6V-2.8V
Module Density   128Mx64
Chip Density   64Mx8
Pins   184
Package   Jet Black 6 Layer PCB
Heat Spreader   Yes (color may vary)
Part #   991434

Mushkin 2GB-Kit HP3200
The Mushkin 2GB-Kit is quite simply just two single 1GB modules attached together. According to Mushkin, they test each of the modules together in a dual channel motherboard to ensure compatibility.

Mushkin includes blue heat spreaders on the modules. Heat spreaders have always been a bit of a controversial topic here at Viperlair. Some people like them, others think they are not worth the money. Personally, seeing as Mushkin included them, they are not an extra expense. With memory running as fast as it does, a bit of extra cooling on the ram cannot hurt. They also give you ram that extra bit of shine, especially in a windowed computer case.

Test Setup
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester
Soltek EQ3901-300P
FIC Radeon 9600 256MB
Seagate 200GB SATA
Mushkin 2GB-Kit HP3200 – 2-3-2-6 @ 200MHz and 208MHz

Benchmarks
Sisoft Sandra
PiFast
Unreal Tournament 2004

Installation Experience
I only ran into one issue installing the 2GB kit, that being memory timing. For some reason my system would recognize the ram fine, but did not set the timings correctly. The Soltek board recognized the timings as 3-3-3-8 as compared to the rated 2-3-2-6. Manually setting the timings fixed the problem, but it was still an added step that you may need to double check when installing the memory.

Overclocking
The Soltek QBIC has not been a winner in overclocking in the past review, so even though I had high hopes for the ram, I knew the system was going to be the deciding factor. Unfortunately I was only able to hit 208FSB with the Mushkin ram. No timing or voltage change would let me boot into windows past this. They system posted at 210, but would continually restart at the windows boot screen. This is no fault of the ram though, as shown in Hubert's review, the system really taps out around the 208-210 FSB range. The small size and poorer cooling is the cause.

One thing to note though, I was able to keep the timings at 2-3-2-6 and the voltage at 2.6V at 208FSB. The ram is rated to go up to 2.8V, so this ram should be able to overclock further than I was able to test.

SiSoft Sandra 2005 Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Our standard synthetic memory test gives us a good baseline.

As expected, the slightly OC'd Mushkin is faster than stock. No doubt, the bumped up CPU influences the results.

PiFast
PiFast is a great means of judging CPU/Memory performance. Pi is calculated using the Chudnovsky method to 10,000,000 digits with 1024k FFT and no disk memory. Results are in seconds and the lower the better.

Slight improvement in computation time is shown for the overclocked Mushkin 2GB-Kit. Once again it seems that clock speeds are a bit more important that the amount of memory.

Unreal Tournament 2004
UT2k4 is the only game test in this review and is run at 640x480 at minimum detail to remove any video card bottlenecks.

Around a 4 frame difference is shown between the two sticks. It still seems like we are not quite filling the 1024MB of memory yet, so clock speeds are the deciding factor.

Final Words
Let's be honest, 2GB of memory is a whole lot of memory. We are talking 2048 megabytes, 2,097,152 kilobytes , or a lot of bytes... This kit is not for the faint of heart. You need to be a hardcore video editor, photo editor, running a fairly high powered server, or a major gamer to need this much ram.

If you are any of those then this kit is awesome. The tight timings and overclocking headroom make this kit an excellent choice. Having 2GB of ram gives you some nice options when it comes to system performance and usability. You can totally eliminate any virtual memory in the system, and you also have the ability to make a good sized high speed ram drive. Try running an app out of a ram drive and you will never want to use your hard drive again.

Pros: Tight timings, a lot of ram…, included heat spreaders, overclocking potential

Cons: Price (you will pay a premium for the 1GB (each) modules)

Overall: If you truly need a lot of ram, this kit is excellent. Mushkin provides great performance in a great package with their 2GB High-performance Kit.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to use our Forums to discuss this review.

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