I must admit that lately I’ve been pretty happy with performance of my PC. With Core 2 duo processor inside, 4 Gigabytes of ram and Intel chipset motherboard (on Windows XP) everything is working flawlessly. But you know how it is with high performance PC’s, whenever you see that there is something better and faster than your current PC configuration – you just start to imagine ‘what don’t I have this?’.
It’s the same for every computer part, its processor, motherboard, graphic card or memory.
Today I’m talking about my first experience with the new (although new maybe it’s not the right word, since DDR3 was officially launched last year) DDR3 memory modules from takeMS.
Now a bit about the company – takeMS
TakeMS is a German company which is feeling obliged to the tradition of? Made in Germany. Each takeMS product is produced and tested according to German standards, irrespective of the production site. ? Made to meet German quality standards. This applies to the product quality as well as to the compliance with the test and environmental guidelines and of course also to the service and the support. Being convinced of the quality of its products, the takeMS grants a warrantee of 10 years on the random access memories and of 5 years on the innovative flash and USB products.
takeMS signifies millions of sold memories in more than 50 countries. With the strategic reorientation on July 1st, 2006 by the spin-off and the successful placing of the technology and lifestyle brand takeMS, the takeMS International AG has set a new goal: to be a leading supplier for memory modules, flash cards, USB flashes and multimedia players Europe-wide with large-volume channels of distribution in the industry and commerce.
In the frame of the extension of the sales strategy, takeMS will more actively support the market of specialist suppliers by distinctly increasing the brand awareness at the end customers and by pushing the establishing of the technology and lifestyle brand takeMS. Further experts of the branch had been employed for sales in South-east Europe, Spain, Northern Africa, South America and the region comprising Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The best need the best in the team, only then highest quality and performance will result. Therefore, takeMS is working closely together with strong partners such as e.g. Shuttle, Foxconn, MSI and ASRock. takeMS is aiming for the leadership in technology, production and quality.
Kind people from takeMS have again come out with little help. I’ve recently got the new Asus Blitz Extreme Intel P35 chipset with DDR3 memory support. It’s high end motherboard from Asus series of R.O.G. (Republic Of Gamers) type of motherboards.
One of its great features is the fact it has easy accessible clear CMOS on its backpanel.So whenever I’ve pushed too far with overclocking, it was very easy for me to reset everything back to defaults. So I didn’t have to open the computer case – yey!
The modules are looking kind of normal for memory modules – standard Green PCB. The modules are without any passive coolers… but then again I must admit that they run so much cooler then DDR2 modules, that you really don’t need passive coolers (on default or overclocked frequency).
I wanted to find out more about these modules, but I was unable to find much information. And I don’t have any detail information who is the exact manufacturer. I even tried some ‘dirty tricks’ to look it up on the internet – on one unofficial ram list and detail chip manufacturers.
But takeMS isn’t listed on it. No matter about this information, it’s the performance that it’s important.
Specifications for the modules (as can you see on the CPU-z picture) are rated 7-7-7-20 on 1066 MHz, but from the CPU-z screen you can see that it can run on 610 (1220), 686 (1372) and 762 (1524) MHz on default 1.5 voltage for memory modules.
Here are detail specifications of those memory modules:
- Part number: takeMS TMS1GB364C081-107KQ
- Type: TakeMS ddr3-1066 MHz (2*1Gb kit)
- Speed: DDR3-1066 MHz
- Density: 64Mb * 8 chips, double sided / 16 ICs – DDR3 SDRAM
- Timings: 7-7-7-20 default 1066 MHz
- Voltage: 1.5 V (default speed)
- Warranty: 10 years
As it goes for the installation procedure, DDR3 modules are much easier to install inside PC. It has a notch more on the left side of the modules, so it’s really easier to install. Like in my case, which has tons of cables everywhere. So when you look inside computer case, and if you haven’t got a clear view on the memory slots – it’s much easier to install DDR3 modules.
As you can see on the picture compared with DDR2 Transcend modules, the notch is moved a little bit more to the left, you can install DDR3 modules without even looking at the memory slots. So just have to pushed them and wait until your hear the ‘click’.
Other features include standard takeMS warranty, and that’s their 10 year worldwide warranty for memory modules! So not some lifetime warranty or product lifetime warranty (which some manufacturers say it’s 1-3 years only) but in each country you purchase them – you have that warranty. It’s great to have this as a standard now.
One thing that I value the most is that it’s important for motherboard to work on default factory BIOS… it’s hard when you’ve purchased the new motherboard, and you had to boot with other components, just to flash BIOS to make it work. I can only say that everything worked just right ‘out of the box’. Even with default BIOS from Asus (which cannot be found on their download webpage).
Now I’ve come to the overclocking part. I must say that it was very hard to write this part of article! There are several reasons for it. With this new motherboard Asus Blitz Extreme has included TONS of features and configurable options for overclocking every part of time. From CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge and of course memory voltage – so it can be tweaked to achieve maximum overclocking results.
I must say that I’ve found tons of other options in BIOS that I don’t have a clue what do they do exactly. And that’s my only criticism to this Asus motherboard, the manual is very short and only gives you a brief description on these system settings. One thing is for sure, increasing the voltage of motherboard components on this motherboard is not enough. Overclocking now days with tons of new BIOS options is not so easy as before.
Anyway moving along when I’ve started to test these modules and to write down the values of these benchmarks I was surprised a bit with overclocking results. To put a long story short, I was unable to get same overclocking performance when I was working with single DDR3 module and with dual channel DDR3 modules. With one module I was able to reach FSB of 315 MHz!
Also memory frequency of 1260 Mhz. When I’ve benchmarked with these overclocked settings I was able to gain 10-20% more performance. But I’ve decided not to include these results since it’s not fair to compare 1gb*DDR3 overclocked module with 2gb*DDR3 dual channel modules on default frequency!
I really don’t know at this moment what exactly is the problem here (PSU, motherboard, BIOS settings, processor, voltage or something else) but I’ll try to figure this and will update my article when I find the solution for this problem.
Test platform:
- Intel Core2Duo E6300 processor, cooled with Zalman 7000B-Cu cooler
- Asus Blitz Extreme @ 0804 BIOS
- Leadtek PCI-e 7600gt 256mb
- Seagate Sata 120Gb 8mb cache
- Antec P150 case
- Seasonic S12 430w PSU
- Pioneer DVD-rw + Lg DVD combo
- Software: Windows XP Pro with SP2
Test include synthetic benchmarks: Super pi, Lavalys Everest 4.0, Sisoft Sandra and ScienceMark 2.0
Everest 4.0:
takeMS Mach2 DDR2-1066 default FSB 266, auto latencies – memory read: 7070 Mb/s, memory write; 4851Mb/s
takeMS Mach2 DDR2-800, 372 FSB, auto latencies – memory read: 8735 Mb/s, memory write; 6628 Mb/s
takeMS DDR3-1066 default FSB 266, auto latencies – memory read: 6675 Mb/s, memory write; 4764 Mb/s
ScienceMark cumulative score:
ScienceMark Mach2 DDR2-1066 default FSB 266 auto latencies – overall score 1429.92
ScienceMark Mach2 DDR2-800, 372 FSB, auto latencies – overall score 1538.56
takeMS DDR3-1066 default FSB 266, auto latencies – overall score 1146.38
Superpi-modded v1.1 (includes milliseconds) – (lower is better)
Mach2 DDR2-1066 default FSB 266 -2M – 1m 07.766s
Mach2 DDR2-1066 default FSB 266 -4M – 2m 24.344s
Mach2 DDR2-800, 372 FSB, auto latencies -2M – 1m 05.968s
Mach2 DDR2-800, 372 FSB, auto latencies -4M – 2m 21.562s
takeMS DDR3-1066 default FSB 266 -2M – 1m 05.953s
takeMS DDR3-1066 default FSB 266 -4M – 2m 21.282s
Sisoft Sandra vXI SP1
DDR2-800 default FSB 266
memory bandwidth
-int 5283 Mb/s
-float 5295 Mb/s
memory latency: 94ns
speed factor: 56.2
Mach2 DDR2-800 default FSB 372
memory bandwidth (more is better)
-int 7056Mb/s
-float 4825 Mb/s
memory latency: (less is better) 87 ns
speed factor: 54.7
DDR3-1066 default FSB 266
memory bandwidth
-int 5425 Mb/s
-float 5447 Mb/s
memory latency: 98ns
speed factor: 61.0
As you can see from the benchmarks above… DDR2 modules are very mature product and it’s giving the hardest time to the new DDR3 memory modules. It has (currently) the best price and performance ratio.
It’s just that DDR3 will support in the future higher bandwidth and higher speeds. But if you have read some articles on comparison of DDR2 and DDR3 memory modules, these results and not that much of a surprise:
Conclusion
Intel as one of the biggest chipset and processor manufacturers in PC world will dictate which memory standard it will support in the future. Although the new chipset (P45) is already launched, most of these new motherboards will support DDR2 memory modules.
I’m sure that Intel will advise manufacturers of the DDR3 modules to slowly cut their prices on these modules. So you’ll just have to keep an eye what new motherboards Intel is starting to produce, are the any issues on them.
Be sure to check out which new technologies will Intel introduce to the market in the next year or two. Most new motherboards as you can see will support only DDR3 exclusively.
So DDR3 memory modules is really future proof and this product it’s something that will be faster the DDR2 in the future. Once again DDR2 modules are nowadays really mature products on the market, and as you can see from these benchmarks. It’s definitely not easy for the new DDR3 modules to outperform them.
So for now I would say the result is 2:0 DDR2 vs DDR3. DDR2 showed that it has performance with acceptable price.
On the other hand DDR3 showed us that it has potential, but modules that work on 1066/1333 MHz have equal performance to DDR2 modules. But in future that’s going to change and it’s only a question of days when DDR3 will outperform DDR2 modules. At the time of writing this article there are even DDR3 modules on 2000 MHz, and I’m sure they perform better then DDR2 on 1066 MHz!
The only problem (as with all DDR3 modules) is it’s price and availability on the market. The process of transition from old to new technology is always painful. And every couple of years the transition process in memory modules area is painful to accept. But if you’re looking for the maximum performance and high speed modules – you really don’t have a choice. The best thing that motherboard manufacturers can do for its users is to manufacture motherboards with DDR2 and DDR3 slots for memory modules! But from what I know from before not much motherboard manufacturers include support for different memory standards. I really don’t know why this is the case.
One last thing that is not helping the acceptance of DDR3 standard is the difference between Intel XMP standard and nVidia’s EPP standard. You can read more about this on here.
I assume that in the months to come, memory manufacturers will produce separate product lines which boost performance on Intel chipset with XMP, while others will support nVidia’s EPP standard.
For this takeMS DDR3 modules I can only say that it was a pleasure to work with. I haven’t had any issues and with this low operating voltage (1.5v) they have stayed cool during several hours of work.
At this time the only questions remains how much will they cost… but I’m sure that takeMS will find the right price for these modules (unlike some memory manufacturers which are always 30% more expensive then competition – just because of it’s brand name).
DDR2:
+ Availability
+ Price below its market value
+ Speed equal (at this moment) to DDR3
- Higher voltage requirements (which generate more heat)
- Maximum of its speed (1066 MHz to 1150 MHz unofficially)
- DDR2’s low price and which makes more costs then profit, manufacturers will try to make transition to DDR3 A.S.A.P.
DDR3:
+ Runs on lower voltage then DDR2 – which means it’s cooler
+ Future-proof technology for new Intel/AMD motherboards and chipsets
+ High overclocking potential
- Not widely spread on the market
- HIGH price
- Not much better or faster than DDR2 modules (at this moment)
Thanks for the explanation. I was looking for a recent comparison between DDR2 and DDR3.