Corsair Dominator Twin2X2048-8888C4DF

Originally Posted by HandMadeAndroid
£400+ is a complete waste of money for some chips, talk about jingo rip off marketing for something you will put in the bin in under 3 years. Who cares about a slight performance improvement of like a few mhz, or having to sit at your computer for a whole extra three seconds.

Soooo..I take it you ARENT into overclocking or benchmarking? :D

Originally Posted by HandMadeAndroid
£400+ is a complete waste of money for some chips, talk about jingo rip off marketing for something you will put in the bin in under 3 years. Who cares about a slight performance improvement of like a few mhz, or having to sit at your computer for a whole extra three seconds.

As stated in the article, there is literally no point in spending money on this memory if you are not an overclocker.

The point of this RAM is the same point as buying a top-of-the-range CPU or preoverclocked graphics card...you`re buying a guarantee of those speeds and timings

Its true a lot of overclockers have got to the same speeds/timings as this RAM or close, but you bought a product with only a hope of getting there.

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
I dont know why they didnt use an axial fan to remove dead spots from having three 40mms in a row.

I was thinking that as I read about it, an axial blower would be a far better choice for airflow, something like the one for the CM Stacker case but a little shorter.

I want I want I want!!!!

Gotta get a conroe rig built first tho... but hang on... I'm off to Singapore in a week... Sim Lim Square here I come...

ahhh... well dodgy, tightened security rules means mean baggage limits.... arse...

Where there's a will, there's a way :D

Originally Posted by Pookeyhead
I want I want I want!!!!

Gotta get a conroe rig built first tho... but hang on... I'm off to Singapore in a week... Sim Lim Square here I come...

ahhh... well dodgy, tightened security rules means mean baggage limits.... arse...

Where there's a will, there's a way :D

Don't bother mate. Save the cash and spend it elsewhere. Most of the 6400 C4 stuff uses the same chips as this and can hit similar timings with the same voltage.

I think we've got some 6400C4 in the house - maybe I should give it a run with some airflow going over it

Originally Posted by Tim S
As stated in the article, there is literally no point in spending money on this memory if you are not an overclocker.

Sorry to not understand the overclocking community, I just find it hard to understand why anyone would either want to or could afford to spend such money on very exspensive kit, I guess it must be a passion. I do like to play the odd PC game, usually racing or FPS, but I mainly use my PC as a creative tool as I'm a multimedia designer. I always go for entry level performance and my P4 @ 2.4Ghz still rocks along after 2 years. I would be interested to see an 'ultimate platinum machine,' I'm sure it's possible to spend at a rough guess £4k on some esoteric electronics if you were to get raided raptors, 2GPU, top end CPU, motherboard etc! :?

yup! and thats before cooling!

Each to their own though. We buy the gear we need/want.can afford for whatever we do with our computers.

It should be possibel to hit the £3-4k mark on PC bits, yup. On the other hand there are many hobbies out there that are similarly expensive (or even more so)

I ride bikes, not motor-powered, just pedal-power mountain bikes. Most people think that spending more than £300 on a bike is daft, or maybe £1000 for a mountain bike - yet top-end bikes can cost several grand for the frame alone which brings you up to £4-5k for the uber-l337 bikes.

Everyone has something they spend silly amounts of money on - as long as the money going in is worth the fun you get out of it then it's all good (and ideally that you have a spot of social conscience as well)

they certainly looks big, but surely it would be almost impossible to document if the memory works in certain motherboards, because you can have a whole variety of heat-sinks which determines what happens

How does that fan attach btw ?

Originally Posted by yahooadam
they certainly looks big, but surely it would be almost impossible to document if the memory works in certain motherboards, because you can have a whole variety of heat-sinks which determines what happens

How does that fan attach btw ?

clips over the tabs that hold the memory in place - see here: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=1324900&postcount=4 for more info. :)

I had seen a memory comparison article on Anandtech and part of their conclusion was that: "... AM2 scales better in memory, exhibiting a steeper slope in performance increase as memory speed increases than does Core 2 Duo..." (page 9, paragraph 4) (The charts on page 6 show it nicely)

I must say that at first I was actually quite disapointed that the review was done only with an Intel chip but when I looked I saw that Anandtech couldn't go to the fastest speed on the AM2 platform anyway.

But then, I have an e6300 & couldn't afford this ram anyway so, meh

Originally Posted by DXR_13KE
axial:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3953/axialfangb0.jpg

crossflow:

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/8311/60mmmedag6.jpg

the bottom one i think would be better for this aplication, but it makes more noise.

I'm not sure about the crossflow fan, to get a decent airflow would require reasonably sized blades which would make the thing massive! I think compatability with the size as it is isn't going to be great, let alone if it were made any bigger!

I think the reason that they didnt use a crossflow fan is because of the inability of them to scale well at all.

Originally Posted by Tim S
The last time we pulled heatspreaders off memory, we actually prized the DRAMs off... Also, they're not heatspreaders, they're heatsinks - you would have realised that if you'd read the article.

Do you have high-speed DDR2 memory running at higher than 2.4V in a case? It gets pretty hot - I've burned myself on some 6400C3 modules that had run at 2.3V under heavy load for over 24 hours.

Anyway, thanks for your comments - I'll take them on board. ;)

sorry for flaming, I was just a little grumpy. Anyway I found what corsiar have to say about the affect of heatsprears/heatsinks (as the corsair sticks they test have heatsinkey bits):
http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/tech/AN601_Heatspreader_Comparison_Lab_Results.pdf

it's DDR1 though. I was under the impresion that DDR2 ran cooler?

You are correct in thinking that DDR2 runs cooler at the same clock speed. However, when you start cranking the clock speeds up to nearly three times that of 'standard' DDR400 and putting 33% more voltage than the 'specified' DDR2 operating voltage, the ICs can get damn hot. I don't believe that Corsair has added the heatsinks for show, though.

I was speaking to some of Corsair's engineers (as opposed to the marketing guys) in Taiwan when I was there in June and they were telling me how you can potentially achieve these clock speeds with memory using normal heatspreaders. However, Corsair didn't feel happy guaranteeing these clocks (timings and voltages) with such high operating temperatures.

The main reason behind the heatsink design is to reduce these operating temperatures to more reasonable levels that will work in virtually any case enclosure and typical operating environment. That's undoubtedly the driving force behind using this heatsink design, IMO. :)

Originally Posted by Tim S
You are correct in thinking that DDR2 runs cooler at the same clock speed. However, when you start cranking the clock speeds up to nearly three times that of 'standard' DDR400 and putting 33% more voltage than the 'specified' DDR2 operating voltage, the ICs can get damn hot. I don't believe that Corsair has added the heatsinks for show, though.

I was speaking to some of Corsair's engineers (as opposed to the marketing guys) in Taiwan when I was there in June and they were telling me how you can potentially achieve these clock speeds with memory using normal heatspreaders. However, Corsair didn't feel happy guaranteeing these clocks (timings and voltages) with such high operating temperatures.

The main reason behind the heatsink design is to reduce these operating temperatures to more reasonable levels that will work in virtually any case enclosure and typical operating environment. That's undoubtedly the driving force behind using this heatsink design, IMO. :)

thanks for clearing this up... more of insurance against early component death . As you can probobly tell I haven't ever used any DDR2 :'(

Got any numbers (FPS) for in game tests at 1024X768? I know that sounds cheesy but... http://www.legitreviews.com/article/388/8/

I thought it kind of lame that they would run it at not so real world resolution (1024x768) to see the performance difference while running an SLI system...

My LCD at home is native 1280x1024 and that is where I prefere to play my games at. ;)

I don't have any 1024x768 numbers and the memory has unfortunately gone back to Corsair. :(

Originally Posted by Tim S
I don't have any 1024x768 numbers and the memory has unfortunately gone back to Corsair. :(

Doh! Thanks for the fast reply.

Total noob would like to ask a question please.

I've read Tim's review of the 8888C4DF and that makes sense, but I just don't understand the rationale behind the Dominator version of the C6400C3.

The Dominator version the 6400C3 has exactly the same size, speed and latency as the original Twin2X2048-6400C3, but the specified voltage has increased from 2.2v up to 2.4v.

I can understand Corsair upping the maximum voltage that the 6400C3s can handle, but why up the required voltage when they already have an identical chip that can run at those same speeds and latencies but without needing 2.4v?

I thought it might just be a case of Corsair certifying that 2.4v can be safely used, but when I looked at some detailed reviews on X-Bit Labs (admittedly of the 8888 Dominator) they said that the Dominator became completely unstable when reducing the voltage even to just to 2.2v (which really surprised them, as 2.2v is pretty standard voltage used with overclocking and it's not something that they'd seen with non Dominator Corsair RAM). I've seen loads of reviews of 2.2v Corsair RAM that easily ran at rated speeds and best latency as low as 1.9v. But this no longer seems viable on Dominator RAM (unless the issue is confined to the 8888C4DF). Corsair's decision seems all the more strange given that here are many motherboards that are unable to deliver 2.4v reliably (again, going by what I have read).

The few UK retailers that stocked the C3 version of the 6400 all seem to be swapping them for Dominator versions (rather than stocking both side by side), so users who wanted the low latency 6400 are forced to use the more expensive Dominator version (or try to buy the original 6400C3s from abroad).

This situation would make sense if the new version was actually better than the old one, but from what I can see they are actually worse (apart from the benefit of DHX - which you could argue might not be needed had Corsair not upped the default voltage in the first place).

People opting for 6400 speeds are not going to be using insane FSB clocks, otherwise surely they'd go for 8500s or higher. So given that the 6400s will most likely be run a relatively normal overclocks, why up the default voltage?

Am I missing something?

:?

Hi oomingmak, welcome to the forums.

I believe the reason for this is because Corsair speed bins all of its modules - they all use the same DRAM chips at the moment (as far as I know, all of Corsair's XMS2 modules are based on Micron D9 DRAM chips). If they don't pass certification for 8888C4, they're moved down to 6400C3 then 8500C5 and so on. It would cost more money for Corsair to re-mount the DRAMs on a standardised PCB.

However, with the intro of the new Dominator heatsink/spreader, it means they can push higher voltages through the memory without causing long term damage. With that said though, it doesn't explain why they'd increase the standard operating voltage for the 6400C3 modules.

I think that comes down to the fact that they've changed the way they bin for the 6400C3 modules - being capable of 3-4-3-9 at 2.4V is easier to achieve a higher yield than 3-4-3-9 at 2.2V. On a more positive front, it might mean lower prices during a period where DRAM prices are generally high.

Whilst I don't agree with an increase in operating voltage on something that is essentially the same product, I hope this provides a bit of insight as to why Corsair has done this. :)

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the clear explanation as to why Corsair might have done this.

So (just as I thought) it seems that the change is simply to allow Corsair to use inferior quality chips that would have otherwise failed to er .... "bin?" at that particular speed, voltage and latency.

I was convinced that I must be wrong and that the new C6400C3DF could not be a worse product than the version that it replaced. I didn't want to trust my interpretation of the figures because I am very new to all this (I only just started learning about overclocking for the very first time 2 weeks ago!).

I was just about to place my order (yesterday) for the original C6400C3s, but the only 3 UK retailers that I could find that stocked it have all now changed to the DF version.

As I want to keep my system pretty quiet (while still hopefully being able to overclock it a bit) I'll opt for a non DF 2.2v solution that should be able to run stable at anything from 1.9 - 2.2v.

Cheers