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Super Talent T800UX2GC4


Date
: 07/6/06 – 02:21:42 AM

Author
:

Category
: Memory

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Super Talent

Price
: $260 e-Wiz

To many people Super Talent is a new comer to the industry. They do have 20 years of memory experience and recent expansions have allowed them to produce up to one million units of flash and memory modules each month.

Where does that leave them today? One of the fastest growing companies in the industry poised to surely hit your home in the next few years. While they specialize in DDR and DDR2 memory modules, they offer a wide selection of USB flash drives, MP3 players and flash memory drives. Tonight, we'll stay close to our heart and focus in on the popular PC2-6400 2GB kit they call the T800UX2GC4.

Page 2 : Package

Another blister has arrived and this one sports a Super Talent sticker on the front for identification.

The sticker tells you it is a 2GB kit of DDR2 memory. It provides a web address to the home page but that's about it, lucky for us that we can see another smaller sticker on the heat spreader indicating the model of the kit. There really isn't a whole lot of information on the front side or the back.

Not to say that I'm disappointed in the quality of packaging, but I would have preferred at least another sticker giving me the speed and timing.

Popping the package open, the two sticks easily come out. Unlike other companies, Super Talent has stuck with the basic solid metal heat spreader. It's old technology that'll never fail.

What's missing from this heat spreaders are the old fashioned clips used to apply pressure onto the ICs. The heat spreader in this instance wraps around top of the IC, the surface area is increased at a cost of eliminated any ventilation down between the ICs.

Even the edge of the stick has a bit of metal going around it.

Overall, the modules are really thin. The heat spreader is no more than 1mm thick.

Before we get into the nitty gritty details of overclocking, it's time to pull up the specifications as from the package we know nothing about this kit.

Page 3 : Specifications

Super Talent is very sparse on the details available on their website. I hope this is something that'll change in the next coming months. If we head directly over to the T800UX2GC4 page, this is what we see:

It's not a whole lot, but it does give you the very basics of the memory. Where can we get more information? The press release is often a great place to start. This is what Super Talent has to say about the kit we have on hand.

Lifetime warranty is a great thing and bound to last you a lifetime until you become a reviewer and start peeling off heat spreaders and intentionally voiding your warranty. Not because you peeled off the heat spreader, but because you managed to peel a few of the IC's off too. Not sure what I mean? Well, a picture says a thousand words.

With the heat spreader off, along with the ICs, I got a very good look at what SuperTalent uses.

Micron 61D22 D9GCT. It's hard to find specific information on Micron products which is quite the shame.

For the curious, this is what the back of a memory IC looks like.

I must stress the importance of never ever removing your heat spreaders from your memory. We say it every time and for good reason and the above example is exactly why we do it
after
the review is completed. Let's move on to the installation and overclocking.

Page 4 : Installation & Overclocking

It's not hard to install memory. With a motherboard with a good layout, you won't have to worry about taking out the video card before getting access to your DIMMs. I popped out my Patriot Sticks from my Asus board and slid in my Super Talent ones. The whole process took no more than thirty seconds.

I first let the kit Memtest for 24 hours at the stock timings. While Super Talent claims the sticks are 4-4-3-8, I found them to be 4-3-4-8. I believe someone switched up the RAS precharge and the RAS to CAS. In order to beak the 900 MHz barrier, I gave the kit 2.2V and set the timing to 4-4-4-8. The highest I could achieve was 1000 MHz with 2.3V at the same timing. To ensure stability, I let each setting run for a minimum of 12 hours in MemTest. Our 1000 MHz frequency was left to run for 20 straight hours without a single fault. Any higher and MemTest would start spitting our errors or benchmarks would begin to fail.

Here's a brief breakdown of the frequencies we'll be benchmarking with.

The 200 MHz we gained out of this kit isn't terrible by any standards especially giving the price and the timing we're currently at.

Page 5 : Performance

Memory performance is strictly by the numbers. It's not rocket scientist and the most important thing to consider is consistency. We'll start with a run down of my system.

To analyze the performance, I'll subject the kit to a variety of benchmarks. I started with the FutureMark 3DMark 2006 and 3DMark 2001SE. I then went on to use PCMark 2004 and 2005. SiSoft Sandra 2007 memory and latency benchmarks were also tested along with ScienceMark and Everest. Super Pi 1.4 1M, 2M and 32M calculations were used and all ran without a hitch. Finally, I tested the frame rates of Half-Life 2, Doom III and Battle Field 2 at 1024*768.

FutureMark 3DMark 2006

FutureMark 3DMark 2001se

FutureMark PCMark

Sisoft Sandra Memory Benchmark

Everest – Memory Bandwidth

Everest – Latency

ScienceMark 2.0 – Memory Benchmark

ScienceMark 2.0 – Molecular Dynamics & Primordia

Super Pi 1.4

1024*768 Gaming

There's no doubt that this kit performs without any issues. As we increase the frequency, the performance scales accordingly. When it came down to just comparing the steppings at the same speed, Super Talent and Patriot Memory exchanged blows with not real winner. However, the Patriot Memory won't come close to what the Super Talent goods will do. The downside is the Patriot Memory goods are almost half the price.

Let's move onto the next page where I wrap everything up.

Page 6 : Conclusion

Super Talent has made a grand entrance here at Overclockers Online. The T800UX2GC4 entered the ring with high expectations and it didn't disappoint. The free boost up to 1000 MHz is one thing no one will complain about. With AM2 already here, the days of 300HTT will be back sooner than we think. While Super Talent didn't exactly achieve that rating, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more products from them in the future that will.

The only real fault I have to say about Super Talent is their limited availability. I didn't find this kit at Newegg, Monarch Computer and Zip Zoom Fly. I didn't even bother checking any Canadian retailers. With time, I think we'll be seeing their products flying off the shelves, perhaps at the same ease as how the IC's came off. ;)

Advantages

Low price for tight timings
High performance
Great Overclock
Lifetime Warranty

Disadvantages

Limited availability
Extremely sticky thermal tape….IC's ripped right off the PCB

Overclockers Online would like to thank Super Talent for making this review possible.