//mAr
06-08-2005, 12:43 PM
[pagE=Introduction]
Introduction
First we would like to thank Crucial Europe (http://www.crucial.com/) for supplying us with this memory.
Crucial is a division of micron. They build their own Chips and PCB, not like all the other manufacturers who have the DDR-Ram only soldered together and referred their chips and PCBs by other manufacturers. On the Tracer PC4000 are also unique leds for a good look. Although Crucial/Micron is not normally known as overlocking ram we will do an extreme overclocking test with high voltages and try to find out if they are a good alternative to Ram with Samsung TCCDs or low latency like Winbond UTT BH-5/CH-5.
The chips are getting really hot, so beware for giving to much voltage! Around 3.0-3.1V looks fine for me.
Specification
<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th>Clock Speeds:</th>
<td>250MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>CAS Latency (Tcl)</th>
<td>2.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>RAS-to-CAS Delay (Trcd)</th>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>RAS Precharge (Trp)</th>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Cycle Time</th>
<td>8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Voltage</th>
<td valign="top">2.6V +/- 0.2V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Package</th>
<td valign="top">TSOP</td>
</tr>
</table>
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageclosed_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageclosed_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageinside_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageinside_big.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/package_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/package_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/beiderams_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/beiderams_big.jpg)
LEDs
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsoben_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsoben_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten2_big.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracernight_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracernight.jpg)
Here (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracer.AVI) you can download a small Video (5.1 MB) of the Tracers in action.
Here you can see the system we tested on.
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="116">CPU:</th>
<td>AMD Athlon64 3200+ (S939; 512KB; Winchester)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Motherboard:</th>
<td>DFI Lanparty nForce4 Ultra-D</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory:</th>
<td>2 x 512MB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR PC4000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top">Connect3D X850XT@ 520/540MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top">1 x Maxtor Diamond Max 10 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top">OCZ ADJ 420W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Software:</th>
<td valign="top">Windows XP Prof. , Catalyst 5.8</td>
</tr>
</table>
All parts are selected with high performance and good overclockability in mind to reach high test results. We used BIOS 704-2BT for the DFI Lanparty nForce4 SLI-D.
All AlphaTimings in the Bios are set to auto, except for:
CPC - Enabled
DRAM bank Interleaving - Enabled
Idle Cycle Limit - 256
Dynamic Counter - Disabled
R/W Queue Bypass - 16x
Bypass Max - 07x.
TRAS always at 7, this gives highest memory bandwith when used with the Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) of the Athlon64.
[Page=Testing, Value & Conclusion]
Testing
<table width="640" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable">
<tr>
<th colspan="9" style="font-size:larger">Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">CPU Clock & <br />
Memory Ratio</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Speed</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Timings</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Read</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Write</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Latency</th>
<th nowrap="nowrap">Quake 3<br>
Arena </th>
<th>3DMark<br />
2001SE</th>
<th>SuperPi<br />
Mod 1M</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">JEDEC DDR400A</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-3-3-8 2.7V</td>
<td>5808 MB/s</td>
<td>2226 MB/s</td>
<td>51.8 ns</td>
<td>262.1 FPS</td>
<td>23340</td>
<td>42.28s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 210 1:1</th>
<td>210 MHz</td>
<td>2-3-3-8 2.7V</td>
<td>6041 MB/s</td>
<td>2481 MB/s</td>
<td>47.6 ns</td>
<td>276.5 FPS</td>
<td>24612</td>
<td>40.33s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 230 1:1</th>
<td>230 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 2.7V</td>
<td>6656 MB/s</td>
<td>2737 MB/s</td>
<td>43.0 ns</td>
<td>304.3 FPS</td>
<td>26531</td>
<td>36.31s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 250 1:1<br />default specs</th>
<td>250 MHz</td>
<td>3.0-4-4-8 2.7V</td>
<td>6861 MB/s</td>
<td>2842 MB/s</td>
<td>45.8 ns</td>
<td>320.0 FPS</td>
<td>27163</td>
<td>34.75s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 250 1:1</th>
<td>250 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 2.8V</td>
<td>7112 MB/s</td>
<td>2940 MB/s</td>
<td>39.8 ns</td>
<td>330.7 FPS</td>
<td>28442</td>
<td>33.45s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 260 1:1</th>
<td>260 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 2.9V</td>
<td>7436 MB/s</td>
<td>3057 MB/s</td>
<td>38.9 ns</td>
<td>343.2 FPS</td>
<td>29260</td>
<td>32.14s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 266 1:1</th>
<td>266 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 3.09V</td>
<td>7700 MB/s</td>
<td>3154 MB/s</td>
<td>37.8 ns</td>
<td>350.4 FPS</td>
<td>30093</td>
<td>31.438s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 270 1:1</th>
<td>270 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-3-3-5 2.8V</td>
<td>7533 MB/s</td>
<td>3194 MB/s</td>
<td>38.5 ns</td>
<td>351.5 FPS</td>
<td>29427</td>
<td>31.36s</td>
</tr>
</table>
Very good results, but a motherboard with Vdimm up to 3.1V is required to see the sweet spot of these modules.
Reduced latencies give you a nice gain in overclocking, but not that much, it's better to run these modules with the tightest timings you can get. This shows that this memory is designed for low latencies. Faster than DDR500 with tight timings is very fast compared to 3.0-4-4-8, which is the default specification.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracer266new_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracer266new.jpg)http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/fulltimings_small.jpg
(http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/fulltimings.jpg)
Benchmarks
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/everestread.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/everestwrite.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/everestlatency.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/quake3.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/3dmark2001.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/superpi1m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/et.gif
For easier comparison with other modules, we set a maximum voltage of 3.1V and tested until we found the highest clock frequency and fastest timings for this memory. The Benchmarks Everest Read, Everest Write and Quake 3 were run. We then calculated the performance increase in percent compared to some standard DDR400 memory running at JEDEC DDR400A (2.5-3-3-8). The average percentage of the three benchmarks is listed in following table:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/vsjedec.gif
Conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
Two 512 MB modules are sold for $170 to $200, which is very good for this performance.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Nice unique LEDs
Very good performance
Nice design, beautiful heatspreaders
Great overclockability
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Need a motherboard with Vdimm up to 3.1V to show their best.
</td></tr>
<tr><th>9.2</th>
<td>The Crucial Ballistix Tracer are really great performance memory modules. Great latencies at speeds of over DDR500, where other memory barely run 2.5-3-3-7, together with a great price, help the memory get our Editor's Choice Award. The only drawback is that you need a motherboard which can supply a high memory voltage, which not all boards offer. But there are voltmods for most of them.</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/editorschoice.gif</td></tr></table>
Introduction
First we would like to thank Crucial Europe (http://www.crucial.com/) for supplying us with this memory.
Crucial is a division of micron. They build their own Chips and PCB, not like all the other manufacturers who have the DDR-Ram only soldered together and referred their chips and PCBs by other manufacturers. On the Tracer PC4000 are also unique leds for a good look. Although Crucial/Micron is not normally known as overlocking ram we will do an extreme overclocking test with high voltages and try to find out if they are a good alternative to Ram with Samsung TCCDs or low latency like Winbond UTT BH-5/CH-5.
The chips are getting really hot, so beware for giving to much voltage! Around 3.0-3.1V looks fine for me.
Specification
<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th>Clock Speeds:</th>
<td>250MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>CAS Latency (Tcl)</th>
<td>2.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>RAS-to-CAS Delay (Trcd)</th>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>RAS Precharge (Trp)</th>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Cycle Time</th>
<td>8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Voltage</th>
<td valign="top">2.6V +/- 0.2V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Package</th>
<td valign="top">TSOP</td>
</tr>
</table>
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageclosed_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageclosed_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageinside_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/packageinside_big.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/package_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/package_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/beiderams_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/beiderams_big.jpg)
LEDs
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsoben_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsoben_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten_big.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/ledsunten2_big.jpg)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracernight_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracernight.jpg)
Here (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracer.AVI) you can download a small Video (5.1 MB) of the Tracers in action.
Here you can see the system we tested on.
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="116">CPU:</th>
<td>AMD Athlon64 3200+ (S939; 512KB; Winchester)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Motherboard:</th>
<td>DFI Lanparty nForce4 Ultra-D</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory:</th>
<td>2 x 512MB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR PC4000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Video Card:</th>
<td valign="top">Connect3D X850XT@ 520/540MHz</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top">1 x Maxtor Diamond Max 10 160GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top">OCZ ADJ 420W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top">Software:</th>
<td valign="top">Windows XP Prof. , Catalyst 5.8</td>
</tr>
</table>
All parts are selected with high performance and good overclockability in mind to reach high test results. We used BIOS 704-2BT for the DFI Lanparty nForce4 SLI-D.
All AlphaTimings in the Bios are set to auto, except for:
CPC - Enabled
DRAM bank Interleaving - Enabled
Idle Cycle Limit - 256
Dynamic Counter - Disabled
R/W Queue Bypass - 16x
Bypass Max - 07x.
TRAS always at 7, this gives highest memory bandwith when used with the Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) of the Athlon64.
[Page=Testing, Value & Conclusion]
Testing
<table width="640" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable">
<tr>
<th colspan="9" style="font-size:larger">Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">CPU Clock & <br />
Memory Ratio</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Speed</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Timings</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Read</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Write</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Latency</th>
<th nowrap="nowrap">Quake 3<br>
Arena </th>
<th>3DMark<br />
2001SE</th>
<th>SuperPi<br />
Mod 1M</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">JEDEC DDR400A</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-3-3-8 2.7V</td>
<td>5808 MB/s</td>
<td>2226 MB/s</td>
<td>51.8 ns</td>
<td>262.1 FPS</td>
<td>23340</td>
<td>42.28s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 210 1:1</th>
<td>210 MHz</td>
<td>2-3-3-8 2.7V</td>
<td>6041 MB/s</td>
<td>2481 MB/s</td>
<td>47.6 ns</td>
<td>276.5 FPS</td>
<td>24612</td>
<td>40.33s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 230 1:1</th>
<td>230 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 2.7V</td>
<td>6656 MB/s</td>
<td>2737 MB/s</td>
<td>43.0 ns</td>
<td>304.3 FPS</td>
<td>26531</td>
<td>36.31s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 250 1:1<br />default specs</th>
<td>250 MHz</td>
<td>3.0-4-4-8 2.7V</td>
<td>6861 MB/s</td>
<td>2842 MB/s</td>
<td>45.8 ns</td>
<td>320.0 FPS</td>
<td>27163</td>
<td>34.75s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 250 1:1</th>
<td>250 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 2.8V</td>
<td>7112 MB/s</td>
<td>2940 MB/s</td>
<td>39.8 ns</td>
<td>330.7 FPS</td>
<td>28442</td>
<td>33.45s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 260 1:1</th>
<td>260 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 2.9V</td>
<td>7436 MB/s</td>
<td>3057 MB/s</td>
<td>38.9 ns</td>
<td>343.2 FPS</td>
<td>29260</td>
<td>32.14s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 266 1:1</th>
<td>266 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-2-2-5 3.09V</td>
<td>7700 MB/s</td>
<td>3154 MB/s</td>
<td>37.8 ns</td>
<td>350.4 FPS</td>
<td>30093</td>
<td>31.438s</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">10 x 270 1:1</th>
<td>270 MHz</td>
<td>2.5-3-3-5 2.8V</td>
<td>7533 MB/s</td>
<td>3194 MB/s</td>
<td>38.5 ns</td>
<td>351.5 FPS</td>
<td>29427</td>
<td>31.36s</td>
</tr>
</table>
Very good results, but a motherboard with Vdimm up to 3.1V is required to see the sweet spot of these modules.
Reduced latencies give you a nice gain in overclocking, but not that much, it's better to run these modules with the tightest timings you can get. This shows that this memory is designed for low latencies. Faster than DDR500 with tight timings is very fast compared to 3.0-4-4-8, which is the default specification.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracer266new_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/tracer266new.jpg)http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/fulltimings_small.jpg
(http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/fulltimings.jpg)
Benchmarks
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/everestread.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/everestwrite.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/everestlatency.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/quake3.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/3dmark2001.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/superpi1m.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/et.gif
For easier comparison with other modules, we set a maximum voltage of 3.1V and tested until we found the highest clock frequency and fastest timings for this memory. The Benchmarks Everest Read, Everest Write and Quake 3 were run. We then calculated the performance increase in percent compared to some standard DDR400 memory running at JEDEC DDR400A (2.5-3-3-8). The average percentage of the three benchmarks is listed in following table:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Crucial/Tracer4000/images/vsjedec.gif
Conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
Two 512 MB modules are sold for $170 to $200, which is very good for this performance.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Nice unique LEDs
Very good performance
Nice design, beautiful heatspreaders
Great overclockability
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Need a motherboard with Vdimm up to 3.1V to show their best.
</td></tr>
<tr><th>9.2</th>
<td>The Crucial Ballistix Tracer are really great performance memory modules. Great latencies at speeds of over DDR500, where other memory barely run 2.5-3-3-7, together with a great price, help the memory get our Editor's Choice Award. The only drawback is that you need a motherboard which can supply a high memory voltage, which not all boards offer. But there are voltmods for most of them.</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/editorschoice.gif</td></tr></table>