•  
• Home
• Reviews
• Forum
• Site Info
• Supercooling
• Advertising
• Contacts
• links

 

• Submersion Experiment
• Condensation prevention
• How To's
• Archives

 

Layout

Packed in a rigid hard plastic see through container, the G. SKILL Extreme Samsung TCCD 1Gb Kit is not the flashiest when it comes to packaging. It is what I can call a mimimalist approach. You would barely know that its from G. Skill except for the small logo printed on the right side of the kit's label insert. At the back of the insert is the obligatory instructions and warranty information. It's even got a bar code for RMA purposes I guess. This bar code sticker can also be seen on each module as well with a serial number printed. Opening up the included insert you will see the company profile and seperate sheet with the evidential testing results.

 

   

 

The G. SKILL Extreme Samsung TCCD PC4400 1Gb Kit is made up of 2 x 512mb latest Revision F 4ns Samsung K4H560838F-431 TCCD ICs. Yeah these handpicked and tested modules has been pushed to run at a magical PC4400 speeds at CAS 2.5-3-3-7. The most aggressive rated latencies at DDR550 we have seen to date. Our previous review of the Corsair DDR550 counterpart is only rated at CAS 2.5-4-4-8 at DDR550.

 

   

 

Using the Samsung TCCD chips means that these dual channel kit from G. SKILL can run at both DDR400 using extreme low latencies of CAS 2-2-2-5 and DDR550 using aggressive timings of CAS 2.5-3-3-7. Making the upgrade decision for most users easier as ever. The ability to run at these frequencies and timings is indeed unheard of since very recently.

 

 

 

The only possible drawback that will be obvious to most enthusiast is the absence of heatspreaders on the modules. Saying that though, it is obvious that it's overclocking potential has not been affected in any way by not having them. Besides, this could be a cost saving move on the part of G. SKILL. But then again being a geek, you want a bit of bling bling.  I guess as an enthusiast, aesthetics is sometimes more important than cost even if it means paying a bit more.

 

 

 

Test Setup

 

 

 

 

Overclocking

Once again, we'll go straight to this area of the review so that we can include the scores generated from the highest ROCK SOLID overclock the G. SKILL Extreme Samsung TCCD 1Gb Kit could achieve. As we all know, the Samsung TCCDs has proven to be an overclocking gem when it comes to DDR memory. This chips has convincingly replaced the legendary BH5's from my point of view. In this case, it once again shined and performed according to our expectations. And because of previous experience with these chips, that expectation was really high.

 

However, we never doubted that the G. SKILL Extreme Samsung TCCD 1Gb Kit will not work as promised due to the knowledge that they have been handpicked and fully tested before being packaged. Note that this is true to all retail samples and not just for this particular kit we are reviewing.

 

For the overclocking test, we tried a variety of timings that the memory would work on besides its rated settings. Below are the following CAS timings used:

• CAS 2-2-2-5

• CAS 2.5-3-3-7

• CAS 3-4-4-8

---

---

 

Using ultra low latency timings of CAS 2-2-2-5, the modules maxed out at 213MHz (DDR426). This is excellent if you want extreme performance within this memory speeds.

 

 

 

The highest ROCK SOLID overclock we achieved using these modules on our dual channel setup was 281Mhz FSB. That's DDR562 on the memory at CAS 2.5-3-3-7. That is indeed very impressive. We tried to increase the voltage up to 2.8v and fully relax the timings to CAS 3-4-4-8 to see if we can go any further but the results were the same.

 

 

 

Never had we had modules in dual channel mode running at this speed at such aggressive timings. We are definite that it could overclock more had it not for our system reaching its limits at 281MHz FSB. G. SKILL's tests complete with evidential snapshots show that they even managed to run it solidly at 300MHz FSB (DDR600) but of course we cannot prove that on our end. And at what voltage they achieved the feat, we don't know . We do know, however, that our overclock was achieved with the memory's voltage at only 2.6v, its default. Now that's amazing. I'm sure the voltage modders are smiling :-)

 

 

Next: Test Methodology, Results & Conclusions

Page1- Introduction Page2- Layout, Setup & Overclocking Page3- Testing Methodology, Results & Conclusions