Team Group TXDR1024M500HC3-S DDR-500 Memory Introduction It is now known that every Tom, Dick n Harry is only interested in the Intel C2D. The C2D uses DDR2 hence most reviews of memory is of the DDR2 variety nowadays. My review today is about DDR though. Why? Because there are still a lot of people out there with decent systems running DDR and there’s nothing better than to pair those systems with some really good DDR for better overclocking. Also, now is the perfect time for buying more memory as Vista chews up so much memory. So those who are still using older systems and are not keen to upgrade to a new motherboard and CPU, now’s a great time to upgrade to 2gb of DDR for use with Vista. Here's a picture of the RAM in the packaging. 4gb of nice juicy RAM. :thumbs: Look at all those World Records! The Company Team Group may sound like an unknown brand to most people as it was not widely available in LYP before this. Team does not have a big presence like Kingston, OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin or Patriot locally but it’s actually a well known brand among hardcore computer enthusiasts. Here’s a lil bit of info I took off the Team website. "Team Group Inc. is a manufacturer and wholesaler of computer components. The company is established in 1994. They manufacture and sell high quality memory modules with wafer chips made by Samsung, Infineon, Micron, Hynix, Mosel and Nanya. In addition to the modules, they also manufacture flash memory cards, and USB flash drives incorporating fashionable design and excellent quality. The company is recognized as one of the leading memory product manufacturers in Taiwan. Team Group covers many business regions all over the world, and has four logistic distribution centers: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the USA. We are also planning to establish more logistic centers in other regions. Our company in the USA, Team Research Inc. was founded back in 1990 in Milpitas (Silicon Valley), California, USA. Team Research is one of the top-ranking companies with excellent business experience in the computer components industry. We have developed successful buy and sell models to better serve our customers in this highly competitive field. Team Research inc. also maintains the R&D office for our entire group in order to further support our customers. Our goal is to become one of the leading providers for memories, flash cards, and pen drives in Asia in the near future. Through our four international offices, we can easily provide fast, reliable inventory access worldwide. Having developed close and long term relationships with many leading manufacturers and OEMs, we are able to provide various products even during the shortage and allocation periods." You can see from the company introduction that Team has been around for quite a while. 13 years to be exact. Team is a really good brand for enthusiasts as you can check on their website for the type of chips they use in the particular sticks of RAM you’re interested in. You can also email them and they’ll fully disclose what type of chips they use. No guesswork involved, just ask and you shall get the answer. Now, that’s what I call great support. Specification Now, let’s get down to looking at the RAM I’m reviewing. It’s called Team Xtreem Cronus Series. This is the best DDR kit that Team has as of now. Here’s a quick look at the features- 1. PC4000 DDR500 mhz 3-3-3-8 2. Micron 5B chips 3. 184 pin, non ECC. Unbuffered DDR SDRAMM 4. Aluminum heatspreader 5. 6 layer PCB 6. 2.7-2.9V 7. Lifetime warranty 8. Packaged together as matched pair after stability testing 9. Benchmarked using Nforce3, Nforce4 and ATI chipsets Here’s how the Team Xtreem ram looks like out of the box and installed in the motherboard. It’s got a nice gold aluminum heat spreader on it. The good thing about Team RAM is that we don’t have to peel off the heatspreader to find out what chip it’s using. It’s already stated in their website as Micron 5B. No guesswork involved for the hardcore overclockers who must know the type of chips used before deciding to buy. This RAM is capable of running at 500mhz at 3-3-3-8 timings and can take up to 2.9V as can be seen in this picture. Test System CPU- AMD64 X2 4200+ Motherboard- Asus A8N32SLi-Deluxe Memory- Team Xtreem TXDR1024M500HC3-S Hard Drive- WD Raptor 150gb Graphics cards- 8800GTX Cooling- CM GeminII PSU- Silverstone Olympia 1000W Case- Silverstone TJ07 Operating System- Windows Vista Business 32bit Testing programs n benchmarks I’m using an Asus A8N32SLi-Deluxe and AMD64 X2 4200+ for the testing of this RAM. All I did was plug in the RAM and it boots up with no problems. I only needed to manually set the BIOS to run it at the settings that Team guarantees. So I proceeded to set the CPU to run at 250x10 to get it to run at 2.5ghz for this test. All tests were run with the CPU at 2.5ghz. RAM divider was set at 1:1 so that I can max out the RAM at the rated 500mhz. Voltage set to 2.9V. Timings at 3-3-3-8. Everything went perfectly well. To test stability of the overclock I then ran dual instances of Prime95 and I’m happy to report it’s totally stable. No errors whatsoever. After making sure the RAM works perfectly at the rated 500mhz, I dropped it to 400mhz n then 450mhz for benchmarking. The CPU remains at 2.5ghz, RAM timings at 3-3-3-8 and 2.9V to keep all the benchmarks running at same settings except for the RAM speed. Here's the results for 3DM06 at 400mhz. 8961 marks. 3DM06 at 450mhz. 9046 marks. 3DM06 at 500mhz. 9251 marks. As you can see from the above 3DM06 test. There's a pretty fantastic gain of 290 marks by going from 400mhz to 500mhz. Now I'll move on to Super PI. Super PI at 400mhz. Super PI at 450mhz. Super PI at 500mhz.
Finally, it's on to the Everest Memory test. Everest at 400mhz. Everest at 450mhz. Everest at 500mhz. After all the benchmarks were concluded I then went for the highest overclock I can get out of the RAM. I tried to get the RAM to run at 530mhz. It wouldn’t boot. So I tried 3-6-6-10 and 3.2V. Still wouldn’t boot. 530mhz is over the limit I guess. Then I tried 520mhz, 3-3-3-8 and 2.9V. Booted up nicely. So I ran dual instances of Prime95 and everything runs perfectly for hours on end with the RAM running at 520mhz. The maximum OC of 520mhz is pretty disappointing. I was hoping to get it to go up to about 550mhz but it just wouldn’t budge. My motherboard can only pump in 3.2V to the RAM though. Perhaps the people who have voltage boosters for the RAM can squeeze more out of them but on my A8N32SLi, it’s maxed out already. Conclusion Well, I have to say I’m really impressed by the guaranteed timings and speed. It runs at 500mhz, 3-3-3-8, 2.9V straight out of the box. No compatibility issues with the motherboard and all. Rock solid stability. As can be seen in the benchmarks, the difference between 400mhz n 500mhz is quite impressive. It shows a fantastic 290 point increase in 3DM06 which is quite substantial. Those who play with 3DM06 will know it’s pretty difficult to squeeze out the last few hundred points so a 290 point increase is really quite fantastic. You can also see the improvement in Super PI and the Everest memory benchmarks. There is one minus point though. I would have liked the RAM to go much higher than the 520mhz I achieved. Something like 550mhz would have been a really nice bonus. However, taking into account these are 1gb sticks, 500mhz is already really fast and a 290 point increase in 3DM06 is nothing to be sneezed at. So from a gamer’s point of view, there’s not much to complain about. It’s only the really extreme overclockers who will be disappointed by the slight overclock of 20mhz over the guaranteed speeds. Bear in mind though, that anything over the guaranteed speeds is always a lottery and I may just have been really unlucky to get a pair of RAM that will only do 20mhz over the guaranteed speed. So, in conclusion, if you own an older system running on DDR, this is a really good investment. Perfect timing too if you’re also upgrading to Windows Vista as it’s a RAM chewing monster. For a system to run Vista nice and smooth this 2gb matched pair will be just the perfect upgrade. Of course if you have too much money to spend then by all means get another matched pair to run 4gb. As the saying goes, there can never be enough. :thumbs:
For those of u who were wondering how much these RAMs cost. I've been informed by E-Devices Sdn Bhd that it costs about rm450 only. That's an extremely good price IMHO. :thumbs: After I finished the review E-Devices Sdn Bhd sent me another 4gb of these RAMs. Newer batch which just came straight from Taiwan. I'll try n c what these 4 sticks can do. These 4 new sticks will b more indicative of what is available at retail right now. The 1st 2 sticks I had were from a much older batch. These were the 2 sticks I reviewed earlier. As you can see, the serial numbers are 20070101816. These are the 4 new sticks I just received today. The serial numbers are 20070504097 and 20070504098. That's a pretty big gap between the old and new RAMs I jsut received. Hopefully the newer batch goes even higher than 520mhz.
Actually......... I'm pretty sure there's still a lot of decent DDR rigs out there. Anyway, just played with the 4 new sticks today. Pretty good results. Much better than the 2 old sticks I have. Managed to take them all the way up to 560mhz. It needed 3.6.6.10 and 3V to do 560mhz stable. In fact, I managed to get into Windows at 580mhz, 3.6.6.10 and 3.2V but it wasn't really stable. I've settled for 540mhz though coz that gives a better compromise, at 540mhz it only needs 2.85V and 3.4.4.8 timings, not as stressful for daily use. Good stuff. I'll post up the screenies later. Can't access my Photobucket right now.
thats some pretty good ram. there is alot of ddr rigs out there, ddr is going to be around for quite awhile so it is nice to see there are still some being put out.
