Corsair Dominator GT 2000MHz CL7 Launches this Month

[AuDioFreaK39]

Around $500

During CES, Corsair exhibited an ASUS X58 Rampage II Extreme running its upcoming Dominator GT DDR3 2000MHz 7-8-7-20 sticks at just 1.65 volts.

Before the end of this month, the company will officially launch a 6GB kit for around $500, which is a fairly reasonable price point considering the higher estimates that have been circulating the past couple months.

As mentioned earlier, the new sticks are powered by Elpida's new 50nm integrated circuits which are capable of remarkably low latencies at high frequencies up to 2500Mbps.

Corsair will reveal several other new products later this January, including a DDR3 1866MHz kit with CL7 timings using the new ICs as well. We look forward to covering the product lineup as it hits the retail market.



No Self Promotion allowed


esquared
Anandtech Senior Moderator

 

[Yellowbeard]

I'm not supposed to officially speak about it yet but, the guys at PC Perspective broke the news on our condensation controller:

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=6630

 

[Denithor]

Yah! More useless memory bandwidth!

:roll:

Sorry, guys, but when going from DDR3-1066 to DDR3-1600 only nets you like a 2 second reduction in encoding time on a 7.5GB DVD or 1fps in a game I just have a hard time getting excited about cranking it up another notch to DDR3-2000.

 

[Yellowbeard]

A product like this is more geared towards high end OCing, not a work station or email machine.

 

[poohbear]

I hafta agree w/ denithor, @ CL timing of 7, how much faster can these things be? What is the max in terms of memory bandwidth that a Core2Duo can use ddr800? ddr 1066? what about the new i7? thanks for anyone that can answer this. cheers.

 

[Denithor]

With the current architecture, processors are not data-starved as in past generations. The A64/X2/X4 chips have the IMC that makes bandwidth essentially irrelevant and the C2D/C2Q chips have enough on-board cache that they don't have to access system memory often to keep the cores fed adequately (cores run from cache not directly from system memory). The new i7 also now has the IMC in addition to a large shared L3 cache and the updated Phenom II has a boosted L3 cache which improves performance significantly (even while using "slow" DDR2 memory - wink wink nudge nudge!).

The only thing I've found that needs faster memory is overclocking potential if you want to run 1:1 ratios. IE you've gotta have fast enough memory to handle the fsb you run or you limit your OC (e8400 needs memory that can handle DDR2-900 speed for 4GHz @ 1:1). But even for those cases you don't generally need anything faster than DDR2-1000 (which gives you up to 500 fsb without overclocking your RAM).

The only advantages I see to DDR3 is lower power consumption (due to lower voltages) and possibly lower latency (if your cpu does have to access memory directly due to cache miss-feed or something - it won't slow down as much as it would with slower memory).

 

[AdamK47]

I'd love to get these, but it would require a 4GHz uncore clock speed. My 920 can't do that. Perhaps they'll have ultra low latency 1600 modules in the future.

 

[poohbear]

Originally posted by: Denithor
With the current architecture, processors are not data-starved as in past generations. The A64/X2/X4 chips have the IMC that makes bandwidth essentially irrelevant and the C2D/C2Q chips have enough on-board cache that they don't have to access system memory often to keep the cores fed adequately (cores run from cache not directly from system memory). The new i7 also now has the IMC in addition to a large shared L3 cache and the updated Phenom II has a boosted L3 cache which improves performance significantly (even while using "slow" DDR2 memory - wink wink nudge nudge!).

The only thing I've found that needs faster memory is overclocking potential if you want to run 1:1 ratios. IE you've gotta have fast enough memory to handle the fsb you run or you limit your OC (e8400 needs memory that can handle DDR2-900 speed for 4GHz @ 1:1). But even for those cases you don't generally need anything faster than DDR2-1000 (which gives you up to 500 fsb without overclocking your RAM).

The only advantages I see to DDR3 is lower power consumption (due to lower voltages) and possibly lower latency (if your cpu does have to access memory directly due to cache miss-feed or something - it won't slow down as much as it would with slower memory).

thanks man, great info here. i would've thought that because the C2D doesnt have an IMC it would be more effected by bandwidth/memory timings, but i guess not.

Also, can't you just loosen the timings for ddr 800 ram and run em @ ddr 1000 speeds?(for overclocking 1:1) i know there's no guarantee, but if its running @ tight timings @ ddr-800 then they should work @ ddr-1000 fine w/ looser timings yea?

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: poohbear
thanks man, great info here. i would've thought that because the C2D doesnt have an IMC it would be more effected by bandwidth/memory timings, but i guess not.

C2D overcomes the lack of an IMC with a "helping heaping" of L2 cache - enough that the cores basically never have to access system memory directly. That's why the increased L2 cache makes a difference in some applications (especially those that entail large amounts of data crunching that must be performed rapidly). The Celeron dual-cores with a measely 512k of shared L2 cache completely suck compared to even the Pentium duals with 1-2MB cache (which are surpassed by the 3/4/6MB chips). You can see further validation of this with i7: with an IMC there is no longer a need for a huge L2 cache, each core has a dedicated 256k L2 cache and all four share a larger/slower L3 cache.

Also, can't you just loosen the timings for ddr 800 ram and run em @ ddr 1000 speeds? (for overclocking 1:1) i know there's no guarantee, but if its running @ tight timings @ ddr-800 then they should work @ ddr-1000 fine w/ looser timings yea?

You answered your own question, right there... 😀

In essence, the DDR2-1000/1066 sticks are identical (in most cases) to their slower-clocked DDR2-800 brethren. The only difference: the manufacturer pulls sticks at random & tests at higher speed (generally at higher volts, too) to ensure that they actually will run those speeds.

 

[poohbear]

thankd denithor, i figured as much. Cheers and thanks for the feedback.