Crucial brings their always popular Ballistix line here to GotFrag so we can see how these sticks perform and if they are worth your hard earned dollar.

Category: System Memory
Manufacturer: Crucial
Product: BL2KIT12864AA1005 (2×1GB) DDR2 1000 Kit
Price: $99.99

Intro
The ever-expanding DDR2 market is getting quite elaborate with
different water-based and fan-based cooling solutions. With these new
cooling solutions, it’s always exciting to see how some of the high-end
RAM sticks with heat spreaders perform. Today we have Crucial’s
PC2-8000 RAM in a 2×1GB set. When these sticks first came out, they
were $400-$500 which is a high price to pay for 2GB of RAM. Now that
the DDR2 market has become more stabilized, thanks to AM2 and Core 2
Duo setups, we are going to give these sticks a go and see what kind of
overclocks we can achieve out of these modules rated at 1000MHz.

With overclocking becoming more mainstream and modern day setups making
it easier than ever, faster and faster RAM is in demand. The governing
body which determines acceptable RAM speeds, JEDEC, does not approve
DDR2 over 800MHz. So, use of these sticks at stock speeds is
technically overclocking, though many motherboards can support this
right out of the box.

The Packaging
Crucial has never been one for elaborate packaging - relying on their
cardboard box styling. To be perfectly honest, the boxing doesn’t
matter. The sticks come in anti-static bags suspended in a cardboard
holder packed with some informational fliers, and that is about it. But
all we care about is that it works. If this RAM performs as well as it
should, I could care less about how it’s packaged just as long as it’s
safe and secure, and Crucial does just that.

The RAM
Specifications

  • Model Number: BL2KIT12864AA1005
  • Type: 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
  • Capacity: 2GB (2 x 1GB)
  • Speed: DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000)
  • Timings: 5-5-5-15
  • Max Voltage per Warranty: 2.2V

These sticks from Crucial are quite sharp in a classy looking way.
The heat spreader isn’t overly gaudy, though they are yellowish orange
which is not a common color for PC components, but they still look
exceptional. The RAM actually debuts a new heat spreader from Crucial.
In fact, older models of this RAM can still be found with the old heat
spreaders like the shown here.
This new heat spreader removed the large clips, which were prominently
spotted on the old RAM, and instead utilize a minimalistic approach
that does not run all the way across the spreader. These Ballistix are
built on the now-famous Micron D9 memory chips which are known for
their extensive overclocking headroom and have become the “IT” chips to
have in memory today - much like the Samsung TCCD and Winbond BH-5 were
in the past.

These sticks install like most every other RAM stick out there: push
and snap in. They don’t have a high clearance and should fit right in
on most motherboards as they did my EVGA 680I.

{mospagebreak heading=Introduction&title=Testing Time}
The Tests
We mentioned earlier about motherboards often supporting higher than
DDR2 800MHz right out of the box. The EVGA 680I just happens to be one
of those boards, so we are going to test the Crucial Ballistix on this
setup. Another great feature of these 680I boards is unlinked
overclocking. In essence, this means you don’t have to worry about RAM
dividers or the RAM speed being linked to the bus speed. You can
overclock each component on its own, regardless of your other parts.
This proves to be a excellent way to test the RAM isolated from the
rest of the system speed

The setup is as follows:

 

  • Intel Core 2 Duo 6700 with Arctic Freezer Pro 7
  • EVGA 680I Motherboard
  • Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-8000
  • EVGA 8800GTS 320MB Super Clocked
  • Antec NeoHE 550w PSU
  • Western Digital 150GB Raptor
  • Windows XP Professional SP2
  • NVIDIA Forceware 97.92 WHQL
  • Windows XP SP2, fully patched

We are going to test these sticks under three different speeds and
timings. First we will test them at stock speeds (1000MHz) and timings
of 5-5-5-15. Next, we will test them at the lowest timings possible at
the standard JEDEC speed of 800MHz. And finally, we will push the
speeds as high as we can with minimal to no increase in timings. Our
highest rated speed was 1220MHz without impacting the timings much at
all.

We will be testing with the following applications:

  • PCMark05 Memory Test
  • 3DMark06
  • Half-Life 2: Episode 1
  • Counter-Strike: Source
  • Call of Duty 2
  • Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
  • ScienceMark 2.0 Memory Bandwidth

We can tell from these numbers that the higher speed of the RAM pushes
out better numbers in the graphically intensive Half-Life 2: Episode 1.
It’s not a huge gap, but the game benefits more from higher speeds than
lower timings.

At 400MHz, we see close to no impact while playing Oblivion. An
interesting point is that these sticks are quite finely tuned at their
stock speed and timings. Any adjustments to the stock settings do not
have a serious impact to the RAM’s performance.
{mospagebreak title=CS, COD2 and More}

Counter-Strike: Source shows on average a 2.5 FPS increase. Again, the
increase is nothing massive, but similar to the testing in Half-Life 2:
Episode 1. Thus if you want higher FPS, pushing your RAM speed on these
sticks is a better idea than reducing the timings.

Call of Duty 2 shows a slight increase with lower timings, but memory speed still has the slight edge here.

Memory speed prevails again in PCMark. A 2% advantage at the most, though the numbers are within the margin of error.

I tested 3DMark06 also, but the numbers were all way too close and
really showed no performance decrease, or increase, at any of the test
speeds.

While
testing pure memory bandwidth, we find some interesting facts. 1000MHz
and 1220MHz on these Ballistix do not give much of a difference between
the two speeds in this synthetic benchmark. The stock speeds are
definitely the loser here, though no drastic change is shown.

All of these tests show that there isn’t a huge gap in any of these
performance speeds and timings. You could run any of these test speeds
and timings and get top notch performance. These Ballistix are upper
tier performers rated at nearly the perfect speeds and timings.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion
This 1000MHz Ballistix RAM from Crucial gives excellent performance.
Crucial clearly did their homework and put this RAM out at the lowest
possible timings while maximizing speed. Normally in RAM tests, we
would see more of a fluctuation in scores. However, much of that has to
do with variances in bus speeds, multipliers, and CPU speed. It is hard
to keep all of those variables constant and just test the RAM with
minimal speed changes elsewhere. The 680I chipset gives us the luxury
of testing these Ballistix by themselves, as we are able to overclock
the RAM speed independently of the bus or multiplier. Nonetheless, we
are able to see slight differences and the fact that the Ballistix can
overclock more than 200MHz beyond its rated speed is a huge plus. You
may see different overclocks in your own setups, but Crucial seems to
have a winner on its hands and a solid overclocker with excellent stock
performance. For the absolute peak performance, we would recommend
pushing your speeds a bit higher, but not pushing your timings much
further than in this review. This should give you the best combination
of timings and memory bandwidth possible.

It should be noted that you can buy the Crucial Ballistix Tracer module
which has LED’s and should offer similar performance for a very low
price. This is the best DDR2 we have reviewed here and I have no
problems giving it an Editor’s Choice award. You can’t go wrong with
Crucial’s 1000MHz Ballistix sticks.
Pros
+ Overclocks like a charm, easy to work with
+ Top notch warranty and service from Crucial
+ Offers excellent performance at the price
+ Maintains low timings at a 220MHz overclock
+ $101 after rebate…
Cons
- How much longer will it be around with newer models coming out? Buy it while you can
- Does not exhibit noticable increases when overclocked…
Rating
9.5 out of 10

GotFrag Hardware Editor’s Choice - High Performance DDR2 RAM at a very reasonable price
 

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