RAM - Page 29

AMD has confirmed today that its upcoming RV770-powered Radeon HD 4870 and 4870 X2 graphics card models will indeed make use of super fast GDDR5 memory, as rumors posted online recently suggested.

Corsair managed to set a new world record this week in memory clock speeds.

Using a single 1GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 module (in other words, not dual channel), Corsair were able to hit a staggering 2462MHz DDR. As far as the test system goes, an Intel E8400 processor was used along with an ASUS P5E3 Premium motherboard, which is based on Intel's new X48 Express chipset.

ASUS held a rather upbeat press event this afternoon here in Taipei city at the fancy Westin hotel.

While it was a little hard at first to get the event address details confirmed, we eventually made it and got a glimpse of ASUS' P45 lineup which will officially launch next month at Computex.

OCZ isn't holding back when it comes to releasing high performance DDR3 memory.

The American company has just announced its latest memory kit, PC3-16000 Platinum Edition. Designed to work hand in hand with Nvidia nForce 790i SLI motherboards with EPP 2.0, it will rock the memory clocks at a staggering 2000MHz DDR. You will need to pump 1.9 volts of power through the 4GB kit (and 1.8 volts through the 2GB kit) to reach those speeds.

The memory comes covered in OCZ's Platinum Z3 XTC heat spreaders and is also covered by OCZ's lifetime warranty. If you are interested in latencies at this high speed, OCZ claim the RAM will work at 9-9-9-28.

OCZ are now offering DDR3 memory as part of their Special Ops Edition lineup, these comprising both PC3-8500 and PC3-10666 singular modules in 1 and 2GB sizes as well as dual channel 2 and 4GB kits.

Diamond is today taking the covers off its latest graphics card. It claims to have been the first AIB to introduce 1GB of memory on the HD 2900 series and again is the first to strap a total of 1GB of DDR3 memory to the single GPU Radeon HD 3870.

The lads at Expreview have sighted what could be the world's first budget/mainstream positioned DDR3 motherboard to hit the market. Code-named MCP7A-U, this will be a part of NVIDIA's GeForce 9-series motherboard GPU lineup with nForce 730i Southbridge, HDMI video output, PCI-E 2.0 and many more up to date technologies.

It is said that we should see the upcoming chipset first sampled as early as next month, with a launch date of sometime in July which is when Intel's G45 should see light of day with its assumed DDR3 support. However, Expreview have strong suspicion that NVIDIA will beat them to it.

As to the logic of running DDR3 in a more budget oriented platform; well, it would seem to be a bit un-fitting given the cost of DDR3 memory hasn't really dropped much at all yet, though this will hopefully soon change for the better with the presence of chipsets like these hitting the market.

The never resting OCZ Technology has introduced its latest memory kit and it's not just your standard run-of-the-mill RAM.

OCZ claims its DDR2 PC2-9200 Flex II 4GB series is the world's fastest 4GB kit money can buy. It features the Flex II cooling kit which allows you to water cool the RAM if you are going for ultra high clocks. The package even includes 40" plastic tubing, 4-way manifold barb and 3/8" and 1/2" barb adaptors.

With Intel's Montevina Centrino 2 platform just a couple months away, DDR3 SO-DIMM modules are beginning to show up in the market. Walton Chaintech has just released DDR3 1066 SO-DIMM modules which meet DDR3 JEDEC standards and operate with a working voltage of just 1.5V.

This is where DDR3 modules are really fitting for a notebook, as not only do they have a much higher ceiling, but the lower power consumption reflects on overall battery life as well.

Everything is going green, not in colour, but in concept. No more wasteful power consumption, and certainly much less heat production from everyday items such as globes. Welcome to the new era of green technology.

OSRAM is a familiar name to almost any household, it might be one of those names you've seen somewhere before, but you have no idea what or where it's from. Let me enlighten you, I mean figuratively take you out of the dark. Yes, these guys are the bright flame of the bulbous world. What I mean is, bulbs and globes are their business, and you have probably bought one of their products at least once in your life.

Word is in today that Palit is about to start shipping its GeForce 9600GT graphics card under the Sonic naming scheme with a grand total of 1GB of onboard RAM.

Somebody over at G.Skill must be going a little crazy - they have just started shipping not only 8GB but also 16GB DDR2 memory kits.

G.Skill has announced another DDR3 kit to the market. This time, it's called the DDR3-1800 CL7 comprising of two 1GB modules in the kit.

Okay, the first thing that has to be said... Nvidia knows our contact details and if they want to start sending us products under NDA instead of these mystery companies, we are happy to cooperate, just as AMD has recently agreed to do.

We want to hear negative comments about our work as much as anyone else does about their work. But the bottom line is, when you have been in this game as long as us, you get use to it and it is like water off a ducks back. We understand you simply cannot please everyone.

What we do have a problem with is when people take the time and effort to post negative comments about our content without actually taking the time to read it and verify what they are posting in forums - such as "Chris Ray" who is an Nvidia employed forums member. A lot of the issues that people have mentioned with our GX2 Early Test were actually covered in the article - they just did not read the actual article.

In the final thoughts we mentioned about the newer driver not being able to install, even though it was said to be for the GX2. If you do not think we actively searched or asked for a new driver, you are sadly mistaken. The next gripe is of course the people saying that SLI isn't working under Vista. I included the 8800GT for this very reason. The 8800GT specification is only slightly behind that of the 9800GX2 from a single core GPU perspective. Now with a bit of logic, you would think that if SLI wasn't working in a game, then performance would only be slightly faster than the 8800GT.

Today Patriot Memory have today released their latest DDR3 Extreme Performance memory kit, the PC3-14400 (DDR3-1800MHz) Viper Series.

The RAM is listed over at Newegg for a rather costly $349.99 USD in 2GB kits and also includes lifetime warranty if something happens to go bad. They are also equipped Patriot's Viper Heat Shields that uses their Aluminum Copper Composite technology for what looks to be rather impressive cooling.

Maybe we should have booked thought plane tickets to Germany after all. Nevertheless, the news continues flooding in and we find ourselves back at German website PCGH who scored exclusive pictures of an upcoming and improved AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 which has been rumored for the past week or so.

We are totally shocked to hear that MSI have plans to enter the memory module market under the "Star Memory" brand. We visited MSI in Taiwan for their pre-CeBIT bash but heard nothing about this.

With CeBIT starting in Hannover, Germany on the 4th of March, TweakTown managed to do the rounds to a few of the companies in Taiwan before the show starts. We've got an exclusive look at some of the things which will be shown at the show and some that won't be at the show. We'll start this little roundup with Albatron, one of the slightly lesser well known companies in the market. First up we have a couple of graphics cards and although we saw a GeForce 9800 GX2, we can't post the pictures due to NDA restricitions.

First up is a new low profile GeForce 8600 GT card, which should offer some more horsepower than Albatrons Blue Ray decoder card (no, that's not a typo, it's what they call it). It does run hotter than the GeForce 8500 based Blue Ray decoder card, so sadly this card is using a dual slot cooling design. It has native DVI and HDMI connectors and it has a header for D-sub and TV-out on a separate bracket as well as S/PDIF input via a separate header.

Chaintech has just pushed their DDR3 memory lineup to the 2GHz barrier with some new APOGEE GT "Blazer" series modules, these primarily suited to the upcoming X48 Intel chipset.

The modules use Micron D9G chips and can handle their rated 2000MHz speed with timings of 9-8-8-24. They are to become available as a 2GB dual-channel kit and will include Chaintech's Cool It Smart memory heatsink block.

A new breed of HD 3850 has been spotted in the wild; Expreview has pictures of a "UNIKA" branded offering which uses a modified PCB with the reference GDDR3 memory replaced in favour of Hynix 16Mx32bit 0.8ns GDDR4 chips. With this significant change comes a non-standard cooler (which looks a little...odd) and superior clockspeeds of 700MHz core and 2200MHz memory; not that far behind the 3870.