Value RAM Roundup: Computing On a Budget

Final Words

"And the winner is..." really depends on how you plan to use your Value RAM. Some buyers ask nothing more than that their memory run at stock DDR400 speed as specified. If that buyer is you, then any of the seven memories that we tested here will meet your needs. All 7 of them ran at their specification or better without any problems at all. We would suggest that the CAS 2.5 memories are a bit faster and cost about the same as the Cas 3 we tested. Great choices here are the Kingston KVR400X64C3AK2/1G and the Transcend JM366D643A-50. 1 Gigabyte of either memory costs about $100 and they are sometimes on sale for even less. The Transcend is rated at CAS 2.5. The Kingston KVR400X64C3AK2/1G is rated at CAS 3, but we had no problem at all running the Kingston at CAS 2.5 at DDR400.

The Kingston and Transcend stop at DDR450, and if your budget can stretch $21 to $121 for a Gigabyte of memory, the excellent OCZ PC3200 Premier will give you CAS 2.5 performance all the way up to around DDR480. This will cover the highest 1:1 overclock that you are likely to achieve with air cooling on any AMD Athlon 64 CPU. If your budget can stretch to around $195, you can buy famous Winbond BH5 again in OCZ PC3200 Gold. This will give you the absolute fastest 2-2-2 timings at DDR400 at default voltage - and a whole lot more if you want to overclock now or in the future. 2-2-2 timings are definitely faster, but we would choose a faster CPU over the faster RAM, if that is what the $95 represents in your budget, and you don't plan to overclock.

If you have any overclocking plans at all, exclude the other Kingston memory, Kingston KVR400X64C25/512, and Mushkin EM. They both had trouble even reaching a CPU clock of 205 on our test platform. There are much better choices for overclocking in this roundup. This may be a compatibility issue of these memory chips with the AMD on-chip memory controller or the DFI motherboard, but whatever the reason, they don't clock even modestly on our test bed. There are other choices available from both Kingston and Mushkin, and almost any choice will likely do better at overclocking than these two.

Last, we get to the Mad Overclockers category, or maybe the mad overclocker wannabes. There is an old southern saying that you can't make a sow's ear into a silk purse - another way to say, you can't get something for nothing. Two memories in this roundup challenge that old sage - OCZ PC3200 Gold or "Value BH5" and OCZ PC3200 Value Series or "Value VX". If you can supply the voltage, then these two memories will reward you with 2-2-2 performance all the way from DDR490 to DDR510. Considering that the king of 2-2-2, OCZ PC4000 VX, sells for about $270, these 2 memories are true bargains at $115 for Value VX or $195 for Value BH5. They will neither likely reach quite as far as 4000 VX, but they will come close. VX itself is still a great value at $270 when you compare its performance to other memories in the $250 to $400 price range.

You will need memory voltage up to 3.5 volts or so to reach these performance levels with VX or BH5, but the memory itself is cheap "sow's ear" pricing. Some overclockers get their greatest thrills out of pushing cheap parts to unheard of performance levels. That is why the Intel P4 2.4GHz Northwood became legend. These two memories fit that category. You will need an OCZ DDR Booster to supply the voltages on some motherboards, a voltage mod on others, or a new DFI nForce4 if you want up to 4.0V out of the box. But if you supply the voltage, these two memories will provide legendary performance.

The winner depends on your needs. Frankly, the Value VX deserves a Gold Award from someone simply for the incredible performance at chicken feed prices. The BH5 revival is similarly worthy. The OCZ Premier reaches DDR480 at CAS 2.5 and costs just $121, and the pair of $100 CAS 2.5's are a stellar value. There are quite a few winners in this roundup - the winner for you depends on how you plan to use your Value RAM. We hope that we provided enough information on each of these memories to make your choice for best Value RAM an easier decision.