Geil's Impressive Display
Geil went all out at Computex to demonstrate what they could do with DDR and DDR-2. In addition to the DDR2-1066 that we have already talked about, there were several DDR demos.
There seemed to be a lot of interest in the Geil demonstration of DDR400 at CAS 1.5.
Click to enlarge.
The new DFI nForce4 boards support CAS 1.5 as a BIOS choice, and possibly a few other high-end boards. CAS 1.5 sounds impressive, but AMD tells us that they do not support CAS 1.5 in their on-chip memory controller. And the memory controller is on the AMD chip after all - and not on the motherboard. Our own tests several weeks ago comparing CAS 1.5 and CAS 2.0 on the DFI board did not find any performance difference in these two CAS timings using an AMD processor. We've asked Geil for samples, but we will reserve judgement until we have actually tested the new CAS 1.5 DIMMs.
Geil was also showing DDR running at a stable DDR700 speed at fast timings.
Click to enlarge.
Again, part of the secret was single-sided DIMMs - and everyone's single-sided DIMMs run faster than the double-sided DIMMs that most everyone actually buys. Geil's performance is impressive, and it demonstrates their excellent binning capabilities, but we suspect that many of the single-sided high-speed dimms from competitors will perform similarly if we tested with 256MB single-bank DIMMs. If you enlarge the image you will also see the FSB is 350 (700), but the CPU/RAM ratios are CPU/4. Our experience at this setting with Athlon 64 is that the true RAM speed sets to about 80% of CPU speed instead of the expected 100%. We would really be more comfortable that the memory is truly running at DDR700 if we could see it verified with other utilities that measure the RAM speed. We plan to take a closer look at these DIMMs in our standard double-sided configuration on our standard DFI DDR test bed.
Geil was also proudly displaying their new carbon-fiber heatspreaders. They claim that the carbon-fiber is lighter, cooler, and more efficient than the more commonly used aluminum and copper heatspreaders. However they work, it is undeniable that the carbon-fiber is a great look - and really makes the high-end Geil memory stand out from the crowd.
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nserra - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Any one know what speed FX57 will work?Acording to my mobo web site is 2.6Ghz, anyone?
http://www.asrock.com/support/CPU_Support/CPUSuppo...
nserra - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
I agree with #17 i want some Uli board review.I have been installing Asrock K8 Combo-Z, K8Upgrade-1689 or 939A8X-M and all look good.
Houdani - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
I'm all in favor of moving away from the legacy ports, but is this a new trend to put radiators and shrouds where the parallel/serial ports used to reside?BTW, what IS with that yellow shroud on the Elitegroup board?
kmmatney - Sunday, June 12, 2005 - link
So when are we going to get a review of a ULi based motherboard? Anandtech has hinted at good things...flatblastard - Sunday, June 12, 2005 - link
#9 xsilverYeah, that new external uGuru looks like a cheap Atomic clock. I saw one just like it at Walgreens the other day, lol.
cwroten - Sunday, June 12, 2005 - link
I have been told by Jetway as of June 8 2005 that the A210GDAG-Pro motherboard will not be available in the USA. The A210GDMS-Pro (uAtx version) is available thru Newegg.plewis00 - Saturday, June 11, 2005 - link
Hasn't it been proven heatspreaders are usually a waste of time anyway? Isn't the best way to cool these things, good airflow. When I say usually I mean on your mid-high end DDR400 DIMMs, not on the ultra-fast 3.6V stuff.JNo - Saturday, June 11, 2005 - link
Guys, that diamond was a good heat conductor was news to me but that carbon fibre should be is very surprising. "Carbon" as a conductor per se does not mean anything because the particular allotrope will determine physical and other properties. The fibres are made of graphite sheets which are very *poor* conductors of heat (I remember holding graphite in blue bunsen flames and feeling nothing). I presume Geil knows what it is doing but am nevertheless surprised that carbon fibre should not insulate (maybe it dissipates heat very effectively though?).sprockkets - Saturday, June 11, 2005 - link
Anyone have any experience with Jetway? Their uATX Radeon Express board has Azalia whatever sound with 32MB on board memory with 4 dimms for a 939 socket athlon and a reliable ULi southbridge instead of the buggy ATI ones. Not bad for $95. No gbe though, but big deal.Avalon - Saturday, June 11, 2005 - link
I wonder if that little net box 500mhz 1 watt machine is running an AMD Geode.