FAST 2GB DDR Kits - Part 2

by Wesley Fink on January 23, 2006 12:05 AM EST
Crucial Ballistix CLIII5N.32 PN56278

As the retail sales arm of Micron, the huge memory chip manufacturer, Crucial has managed to impress us many times with their high-end Ballistix memory line. The Ballistix name is almost always means high performance, but it also normally represents good value in the memory market.

There is nothing in the appearance of Ballistix memory that would tell you anything about what is behind the orange-colored heatspreaders. All Ballistix memory looks the same and only the stickers on the heatspreaders tell you a little about which Ballistix you have in your hand. Crucial makes Ballistix in 256MB, 512MB, and these 1GB DIMMs. Ballistix DDR is based on Micron chips, which in this case is a very good thing. The Micron memory chips exhibit outstanding performance and overclocking capabilities, and lately, they have only been available through Crucial. This is quite a change from the days when high-performance Micron chips were available from many enthusiast memory makers.

Specifications

The Crucial Ballistix 2GB kit is rated at DDR500 at the somewhat conservative ratings of 3-3-3-8. We actually found that the DIMMs would run at much better timings at DDR500. We could run the DDR500 speed at 2.5-2-2-7 at 2.8V, which is the best performance that we have ever seen at DDR500 with 1GB DIMMs.

Crucial Ballistix CLIII5N.32 PN56278 Memory Specifications
Number of DIMMs & Banks 2 DS
DIMM Size
Total Memory
1GB
2GB
Rated Timings 3-3-3-8 at DDR500
Rated Voltage Standard (2.6V) Voltage
SPD 3-3-3-8

Voltage is rated at standard or 2.6V.

Test Results

Crucial Ballistix CLIII5N.32 (DDR500) - 2x1GB Double-Bank
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz Memory
Speed
Memory Timings
& Voltage
Quake3
fps
Sandra UNBuffered Sandra Standard
Buffered
Super PI 2M places
(time in sec)
Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps
12x200 400DDR 2-2-2-7
2.6V
545.2 INT 2601
FLT 2724
INT 6082
FLT 6029
82 118.9
11x218 436DDR 2.5-2-2-7
2.6V
545.0 INT 2724
FLT 2824
INT 6449
FLT 6386
81 118.8
10x240 480DDR 2.5-2-2-7
2.7V
556.9 INT 2857
FLT 3033
INT 6736
FLT 6656
80 120.6
9x267 533DDR 3-3-3-7
2.7V
553.8 INT 2991
FLT 3171
INT 6971
FLT 6871
80 120.3
8x300 600DDR 3-4-4-8
2.8V
561.2 INT 3186
FLT 3335
INT 7173
FLT 7078
80 121.5
9x305
(2.75GHz)
Highest Mem Speed
DDR 610
3-4-4-8
2.8V
618.6 INT 3420
FLT 3574
INT 8000
FLT 7901
71 135.1
To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.

Crucial Ballistix has been available for several months and the performance characteristics are pretty well known. We achieved incredible results with our Crucial Ballistix, but our results should be considered among the best that you can achieve with these 1GB DIMMs. Where we were able to run at 2-2-2 timings at stock voltage, we more commonly see results at DDR400 of 2-3-2. This is not to take anything away from the Ballistix 2GB kit, as it is definitely an incredible performer at the more normal results that we see in Forums.

One word of caution: some users have been killing their Crucial Ballistix 2GB kits. It appears that the culprit is high memory voltages. We did a survey of a number of Forums and found that, in most cases, the memory was dying at voltages of 2.85V and higher. Our advice, which we also followed in benchmarking for this review, is to keep voltages below 2.85V with the 2GB Crucial Ballistix kits.

The other end of the spectrum was also outstanding for Ballistix. We reached a stable DDR610 overclock at 2.8V with the 2GB kit. This is the highest overclock achieved with any of the nine 2GB kits tested in this review. Our only real reservation with Ballistix is the spotty availability that has characterized this product since launch. This "on again, off again" availability is usually an indication that yields may not be as good as a manufacturer would like. We don't know the real reasons why 2GB Ballistix doesn't stay in stock, but you should be aware of the supply problems before deciding on this 2GB kit.

Corsair TWINX2048-4000PT G. Skill F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX
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  • Beenthere - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    Crucial use to be a pretty good memory supplier at one time and I've bought plenty of their products. There seems to have been a philosophical change at Crucial a number of years ago and I stopped buying and recommending their products after a major hassle over one failed DIMM out of the many we had purchased. Seems like their submission of a discontinued product to this 1 Gb review is another example of mis-management and manipulation of the media...

    In regards to 1 Gig. DIMMS vs. 512 Mb it seems to me relatively few people really need these DIMMS. If you are a serious gamer playing the latest game versions, sure you'll see some small performance improvement for a PRICE. And that is the point really - what do you get in tangible system performance gain and is it of enough emotional value to you to pay the premium price. Obviously for some it is as they will pay $1000 for a CPU, $700 x 2 for 7800 GTX 512 Vid cards, etc. I doubt however that most PC enthusiasts can really justify those prices nor the price premium for 1 Gb DIMMS based on system performance gains.

    And along those lines... how often do PC enthusiasts and / or gamers replace their entire PC hardware??? If for instance you are building a new PC now because the Opti 165 / X2 3800+ are a sweet deal, would you really be in the market for a new AMD AM2 system in a 4-6 months when they are readily available??? I doubt many folks replace their hardware that often but I could be wrong. If it is true then I wonder where all the good hardware ends up after it's used for a couple months and then trashed for the latest trick-of-the-week hardware???
  • xsilver - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    its called ebay - or as some say "egay" :p

    or I think option 2 is the not so rich friends who suck up a lot

    option 3 is "damn, I overvolted the cpu to attain max overclock and the damn thing fried itself -- oh well, just buy another fx-60"

    note that option 3 people probably fuel the reason for why manufacturers think they can charge us $500+ for a gfx card and $1000+ for a cpu
  • JarredWalton - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    Worth note - and not shown in the benches here - is that 2GB of RAM can have a massive impact on load times for some of the latest games. It is also incredibly useful when you're editing a bunch of images in Photoshop. The difference in level load times on BF2 is amazing, even when comparing 4x512MB 2T to 2x512MB 1T.

    BF2 is something of an exception right now, but over the next year I expect more and more games to push the memory requirements beyond 1GB. FEAR is another reasonable example, though not quite as pronounced as BF2. Some of the MMORPGs also get a lot of use from 2GB.

    Personally, I won't be buying 512MB DIMMs anymore, but I still use them in systems I build for other people.
  • johnford64 - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    Why is the OCZ PC4000 XTC and Normal Gold not covered in either article??? The Platnium EB's are too much money, and i would like a good read and comparison on the XTC/Golds. As a side note, Crucial stopped making their 2GB DDR1 kit, so they couldnt replace my dead det, which is why i got the OCZ's
  • bigtoe36 - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    XTC and golds do feature the same IC, OCZ are moving to replace all old heatspreaders with XTC so you will see some older stock using the old spreader in stores.

    So apples to apples they should clock near the same but the XTC moduls running a little cooler.
  • johnford64 - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link

    But my question is why neither XTC or Gold kits have been reviewed here, if there have please let me know where
  • Miggle - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    not much difference (in RTCW at least) between 400mhz and 533 (must be the timings). Good review tho.

    Now, i'm looking for a link that shows how mem timings impact A64 (2-2-2-6 vs 2.5-3-3-7). Hope someone could give me one.

    still, me thinks that fast mem = costs too much and not that worth-it. I just bought geil value ram that does 2.5-3-3-6 @ 200mhz and quite happy /w it (on AXP still tho).
  • android1st - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    I was just trying to decide about my next system whether I should wait for DDR2 or increase the memory on my old system. I think I'm going to wait for DDR2, hopefully AMD will roll out 65nm around the same time as the new socket. And prices will be reasonable and availability will be high. Guess we'll wait and see...
  • Nocturnal - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    Crucial recently pulled their Ballistix 2GB kits due to unforseen circumstances. Everyone at XS is speculating that all of the RMAs that have been going on is culprit.
  • johnford64 - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link

    That happened to me, 2 dead kits. They tried to offer me 2GB of PC3200. Like hell i am taking $150 ram in place of my $400 USD ram.

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