Date:
Thursday , August 02, 2007
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Corsair DDR3 Product Preview @ 2GHz

We showcase the future of DDR3 using Corsair’s next generation DDR3 memory that scales to 2GHz clock speeds. We also discuss pricing, real world expectations, and the DDR3 memory module market in general in our first DDR3 memory article.

continued...

Stability Testing

We have used a product from Ultra-X, Inc. for a couple of years now in a PCI slot compatible form factor. The Ultra-X R.S.T. Pro 2 is a small diagnostic card that is used to stress the RAM. We have used this as a validation tool and have found it to be very much worthwhile. If you have a RAM issue, the RST Pro card is very likely to pinpoint it for you with relative ease.

This week we took delivery on a new version of the R.S.T. Pro that is in PCIe X1 form. In its X1 PCIe configuration you can use it in any PCIe slot available to the motherboard and you boot directly to the card bypassing any traditional operating system.

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While this is one of our traditional internal tools, it has come in very handy recently with DDR3 testing in that it has been a very good tool in finding issues with failures and errors as to validating DDR3 RAM timings at specific clock speeds that are not always easily identified using traditional stressing tools that have to be utilized inside the operating system. Here is what the maker of the product has to say:

Many memory manufacturers first test memory chips on a traditional ATE(Automatic Test Equipment) and then assemble them into modules. Although most ATE systems are great at catching Logical and Parametric Failures, they have no reliable way of replicating Behavioral Failures. This means that it is possible for a memory module to pass through the entire test process and still fail in the field. Therefore, ATE testers do not have the best possible fault coverage.

R.S.T. Pro PCI Express identifies memory defects that may have passed every usual manufacturing test, but which can still fail in normal use. A major advantage of R.S.T. Pro PCI Express compared to stand alone testers, is the capability of testing and validating RAM within the system environment, testing for Behavioral failures that are sensitive to system idiosyncrasy. Quickly isolate intermittent failures that do not necessarily prevent a system from booting, but surface during extended testing sessions.

The Corsair RAM here passed our MULTI-DAY stress tests at all speeds shown benchmarked on the previous page's graphing. We run numerous Stuck, Weave, Jump, Primes, Parity, Pseudo Random, ATS, and Crosstalk tests for stability validation.

Conclusions

The DDR3 market is shaping up to be interesting if nothing else. Tight supplies are keeping prices high while straining IC builders and memory manufacturers’ relationships as the now crowed enthusiast memory space tries to figure out exactly how to leverage the market place. Elpidia and Micron seem to be the only ICs showing up in the high end as other makers’ chips are flowing into bulker orders from the huge system integrators. Companies like Corsair and Kingston are taking opposite approaches. Kingston is marketing low latency DDR3 while Corsair is likely to enter at the opposite touting higher clock speeds and less aggressive timings. OCZ at the same time is very much likely to take the same approach as Corsair but selling their high performance DDR3 with a higher operating voltage but more aggressive timings than Corsair’s offering at close to the same clock speeds.

While all of this is a bit confusing, I have to think that OCZ and Corsair are more on track for what the enthusiast community is going to want. As shown in the graph on the previous page, there is no doubt that you can extract a lot more bandwidth from DDR3 by scaling the clock, as many of us expected. We do however have a Kingston showcase coming up that highlights Kingston’s low latency MB/s scores coming in around what we have seen at other DDR3 kits running at 1600MHz / 9.9.9.24.

The Bottom Line

Close to the end of writing this preview Corsair got in touch with us and let us know that we would not be seeing the same chips on production modules and they were likely going to have to scale back a bit. They were hoping for an official 1866MHz part at CAS8, but it looks as though the official speed will be 1800MHz at CAS7. (Correction Made 8/2/07-11:49am: Corsair's 1800MHz part orginally noted at CAS8. CAS7 is correct.) Below is a picture of some production ICs to be used on the Corsair memory kits.

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One thing is for sure and that is the future of DDR3 looks to be very bright for the computer hardware enthusiast. Considering that it is scaling to the 2GHz mark now, imagine what we might see in large quantity productions once the fabrication process has matured? Corsair surely has a handle on this and are well positioned in the memory market to make sure they keep on producing robust enthusiast Dominator memory. Hopefully by Q208 we will see prices fall to more palatable levels.

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