Written By:
Date Posted: September 16, 2002

    Memory has come a long way since the days of the 30pin SIMM's that came with the original 386's.  Today DDR and RDRAM are the fastest memory that there is for desktops.  Yet even though we have increased both the speed (20MHz SIMM's to '800MHz' RIMM's) and the bandwidth (~160MB/s for SIMMS to 3200MB/s for RIMM's) the memory subsystem is still a major bottleneck in an average system.  CPU's have increased, in raw Megahertz, by 112X since the 386 DX25, while memory bandwidth has only increased 20X and speed (in Megahertz) has only increased 40X in the same timeframe.

    Corsair has become one of the more respected memory suppliers today.   They began operation in 1994 and since then have grown to be a supplier that many, especially in the overclocking field, have come to trust for quality products and more importantly, reliable products.  According to Corsair this is because of their "strict standards" and their testing in their "Compatibility labs".   

    I have found that when buying RAM, in most cases buying a name brand stick of RAM goes a long way in ensuring that there will be no problems with the memory.  While I have not actually bought any Corsair before I received this stick, I have previously used Micron/Crucial memory in my systems, and this has shown me that name brand can be better than generic.   Today we will look at some Corsair PC-2700 memory.  Does this memory have what it takes to rise above the many generic sticks of RAM?  Lets see.

Corsair PC-2700 RAM

    So what does this stick of RAM look like?  Is it any different from any of the other sticks of RAM that are in the market?  A picture is worth a thousand words so lets look at two quick pictures of this memory.

    There are no stricking features such as a heat spreader, but then such things are more 'window dressing' than anything actually useful.  This is a 256MB stick of PC2700 Corsair memory with the part number CM64SD256-2700, which corresponds to a CAS-2 part found .   The RAM chips are Micron 6ns TSOP DDR chips found .  These chips are stated to reach PC2700 JEDEC specs of 2.5/3/3 at 166MHz (333MHz DDR), which is slower than what Corsair rates this stick of RAM at.  Who is closer to the reality of this RAM's speed?  We will have to wait until we get to the overclocking portion to see.

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