Apacer DDR2 DRAM Modules

Apacer, a well-known independent DRAM manufacturer, has launched high-speed

DDR2 RAM modules. These modules have SPD (Serial Presence Detect) programmed to

JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) latency of 5-4-4-17 working at

1.8 V on 800 MHz. 5-4-4-17 denotes the CAS latency time, RAS to CAS delay, RAS

pre-charge and pre-charge delay respectively. Although the CAS latency is high

at 5, owing to the higher clock speed it performs better than a RAM module with

lower CAS latency. Most RAM modules today come with heat spreaders for maximum

cooling. However, the Apacer RAM module which comes as a pair of two 512 MB RAM

modules doesn't have any. Even then, the RAM provides for cool (literally)

operation and did not heat up even after heavy usage. We tested the RAM in dual

mode on an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor running at 1.86 GHz on an Asus

Striker Extreme (NVIDIA nForce 680i SLi chipset) motherboard with an NVIDIA

6600GT 256 MB graphics card. For testing the performance, we ran PCMark 2005

benchmark which runs a series of read, write, copy and latency tests with

varying loads of 16 MB to 4 KB. The RAM modules scored 4590 PCmarks, which

though impressive, are somewhat low compared to 5900 PCmarks scored by the

Kingston RAM modules we tested in November 2006 (The configuration used for

testing was a core 2 extreme on EXC PX1 motherboard).

Bottom Line: An excellent performer when paired with a good processor

and motherboard.