Value DDR2-800 from Super Talent: Where Can You Go?
by Wesley Fink on November 29, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4
Many readers have been asking about low-priced DDR2-800 in recent weeks. As prices escalated in the past several months the search for value DDR2 became an economic necessity, but now that prices have moderated the bigger question is whether value DDR2 can deliver the performance many buyers are looking for, and save $100, $200 or even more to be used for a better video card or a faster CPU? To better answer that question Super Talent, a manufacturer of enthusiast memory, supplied a typical value part rated at DDR2-800.
Super Talent has several DDR2-800 rated parts, and they decided to provide their lowest priced DDR2-800 rated at 5-5-4 timings. With a price of just over $200, this Super Talent DDR2-800 certainly qualifies as a value 2GB kit. 2GB should be a good match for the soon-to-be-released Vista operating system, but if price is a huge concern in the system build, this Super Talent memory is also available as a 1GB kit with a pair of 512MB DIMMs.
This range of prices and configurations should certainly qualify the Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4 kits as a value product in any current memory comparison. With a rating of DDR2-800 the kits compete with lower rated 2GB kits at about the same price. However, the question still remains whether a step down to DDR2-800 will save a few bucks while delivering performance about as good as the top DDR2 memory.
Super Talent DDR2-800 Specifications
Super Talent was all but invisible in the desktop memory market until Joe James moved from marketing at Corsair to Super Talent. Since that time Super Talent has been pushing for visibility in the enthusiast desktop memory market, and the brand is appearing at a number of online etailers. A quick look at their website will show the heavy emphasis on flash products, which is why you may not have heard of Super Talent until recently. Still, the company has been making memory products for about 20 years, and the Super Talent design center is located in San Jose, California.
In our last review of Super Talent memory we complained about the amateurish packaging of Super Talent. It is clear that Super Talent is paying attention since the new packaging is greatly improved.
The crude packaging is gone and has been replaced by new designs with strong corporate identity. You can also see the attractive new heat spreaders that coordinate with the package theme. These are all clear indications that Super Talent is serious about competing in the desktop memory market.
The T800UX2GC5 is a DDR2-800 2GB kit supplied with attractive blue heatspreaders. This is a value product rated at DDR2-800 and 5-5-4 timings. The matched pair of 1GB DIMMs sell in the low $200 range, but they are still identified on the ST website as a member of the overclocking series. Super Talent also offers another 2GB DDR2-800 kit rated at 4-4-3-8 timings at a price just below $300 (even less with the current rebate). The DDR2-800 5-5-4 and DDR2-800 4-4-3 DIMMs are both supplied as either 512MB or 1GB DIMMs, and as single DIMMs or two DIMM kits (2x512MB or 2x1GB).
We do not know which memory chips are used in building the Super Talent tested in this review. Performance suggests it is not Micron D9 chips or even Elpida memory chips. The memory is specified at the fairly slow 5-5-4 timings you expect to see in value DDR2-800.
As you will see later in the review, Super Talent managed to handily outperform the rated memory specifications with just a modest increase in memory voltage.
Many readers have been asking about low-priced DDR2-800 in recent weeks. As prices escalated in the past several months the search for value DDR2 became an economic necessity, but now that prices have moderated the bigger question is whether value DDR2 can deliver the performance many buyers are looking for, and save $100, $200 or even more to be used for a better video card or a faster CPU? To better answer that question Super Talent, a manufacturer of enthusiast memory, supplied a typical value part rated at DDR2-800.
Super Talent has several DDR2-800 rated parts, and they decided to provide their lowest priced DDR2-800 rated at 5-5-4 timings. With a price of just over $200, this Super Talent DDR2-800 certainly qualifies as a value 2GB kit. 2GB should be a good match for the soon-to-be-released Vista operating system, but if price is a huge concern in the system build, this Super Talent memory is also available as a 1GB kit with a pair of 512MB DIMMs.
This range of prices and configurations should certainly qualify the Super Talent DDR2-800 5-5-4 kits as a value product in any current memory comparison. With a rating of DDR2-800 the kits compete with lower rated 2GB kits at about the same price. However, the question still remains whether a step down to DDR2-800 will save a few bucks while delivering performance about as good as the top DDR2 memory.
Super Talent DDR2-800 Specifications
Super Talent was all but invisible in the desktop memory market until Joe James moved from marketing at Corsair to Super Talent. Since that time Super Talent has been pushing for visibility in the enthusiast desktop memory market, and the brand is appearing at a number of online etailers. A quick look at their website will show the heavy emphasis on flash products, which is why you may not have heard of Super Talent until recently. Still, the company has been making memory products for about 20 years, and the Super Talent design center is located in San Jose, California.
In our last review of Super Talent memory we complained about the amateurish packaging of Super Talent. It is clear that Super Talent is paying attention since the new packaging is greatly improved.
The crude packaging is gone and has been replaced by new designs with strong corporate identity. You can also see the attractive new heat spreaders that coordinate with the package theme. These are all clear indications that Super Talent is serious about competing in the desktop memory market.
The T800UX2GC5 is a DDR2-800 2GB kit supplied with attractive blue heatspreaders. This is a value product rated at DDR2-800 and 5-5-4 timings. The matched pair of 1GB DIMMs sell in the low $200 range, but they are still identified on the ST website as a member of the overclocking series. Super Talent also offers another 2GB DDR2-800 kit rated at 4-4-3-8 timings at a price just below $300 (even less with the current rebate). The DDR2-800 5-5-4 and DDR2-800 4-4-3 DIMMs are both supplied as either 512MB or 1GB DIMMs, and as single DIMMs or two DIMM kits (2x512MB or 2x1GB).
We do not know which memory chips are used in building the Super Talent tested in this review. Performance suggests it is not Micron D9 chips or even Elpida memory chips. The memory is specified at the fairly slow 5-5-4 timings you expect to see in value DDR2-800.
| Super Talent T800UX2GC5 Memory Specifications | |
| Number of DIMMs & Banks | 2 DS |
| DIMM Size | 1GB |
| Total Memory | 2 GB |
| Rated Timings | 5-5-4-12 at DDR2-800 |
| Rated Voltage | 1.8V |
As you will see later in the review, Super Talent managed to handily outperform the rated memory specifications with just a modest increase in memory voltage.
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Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Super Talent has advised:"This kit is on sale at ewiz for $241.02. You could point readers to
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T800UX2GC5">http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T800UX2GC5&quo...
The kits will also appear at other resellers in the near future.
Frumious1 - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Try searching for "T800UX2GC5" and you should find it.http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T800UX2GC5">eWiz
Not in stock anywhere else that I see right now, but Newegg has the T800UX2GC4 at $280 with a $20 mailin rebate, so I bet they'll get the C5 as well, and hopefully closer to $200. In the mean time, try http://froogle.google.com/froogle?hl=en&q=T800...">using a search engine like Froogle/
Postoasted - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Shouldn't we be suspicious of reviews where the test sample is provided by the product maker?Frumious1 - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Yes, and we should stop reading hardware websites because that's where all their hardware comes from. We should only pay attention to Newegg.com reviews, because all of those people really purchased the products they're reviewing! (/sarcasm)I've rarely (if ever) been able to match AnandTech performance results with the same RAM chips they use, but then I rarely have the same CPU and motherboard that they've got either. If they push everything to the same limit, you can at least figure the relative differences are there. Truthfully, I don't think more than a small fraction of people that worry about having the biggest epenis need more than DDR2-800 memory. That will get you just about everywhere you need to go with overclocking (except perhaps with the E6300/E6400 on extreme overclocks), so unless you care about the extra 3% potential performance there's not much reason to buy $500 RAM kits.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Product on AnandTech is not a one-shot deal. If memory or motherboard manufacturers supply hand-picked hardware and users can't duplicate what we find the RMAs go through the roof. This is very expensive for the manufacturer. They quickly learn it is in their best interest to supply a sample with typical performance. The supply issue becomes self-policing.As Editors and enthusiasts we are also not idiots. We do buy samples on a regular basis and compare them to what we find with manufacturer samples. If results are out of line we scream loudly - to the manufacturer and in these pages. Accepting samples from manufacturers for review gets you information MUCH faster, but a review at AT is a privilege - not an obligation. Manufacturers who abuse the "typical sample" rule get moved down in queues or out of our review cycle.
The performance of the Super Talent is nothing spectacular; it is good performance from a fairly rated DDR2-800 memory. There is nothing in our results to raise any concerns. The point of the review was that value DDR2 is almost as good in performance as the best DDR2, and if you are on a tight budget you can save money with value DDR2, within reason, and get more performance by putting the difference in a video card upgrade or a CPU upgrade.
We have asked Super Talent to provide info on where this memory can be purchased. We will pass that along as soon as we receive an answer.
lopri - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
What if the manufacturers are big, I mean HUGE, or if they command a monopoly/duo-poly status in the market? Namely, Intel, AMD, NV, ASUS, et al. Do they consider it an honor to be reviewed @AT? I remember Anand's E6600/E6700/X6800 all hitting ~4.0GHz when they debuted. Retail samples still can't achieve such clocks even months after the initial review, let alone at that time they were merely achieving 3.30~3.60GHz. But it'd be hard to ignore Intel's new products, I'd assume?Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
There is variation in overclocking among Core 2 Duo samples, but almost all of our retail chips - those we bought - will do in the 3.6GHz to 4.0GHz range. My last retail E6800 does 3.6+ at stock voltage and right at 4GHz on good air cooling. The retail runs 2100 FSB while the Intle sample will not do 1MHz over 1800 FSB.Intel supplied the pre-launch chips, but we have bought everything since. There is definitely variation, but our retail purchases do not vary significantly from the Intel supplied chips, except in maximum FSB which we commented on in the nVidia 680i launch review.
Hippiekiller - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
Poop comes from butts teehee