Has Crucial gone cheap with their Ballistix Tracer line?

[gb123]

I just received a second set of Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1GB x 2 ddr2 PC2-6400. I loved my first set but this second set looks cheaper. It only has one set of LEDS instead of two, it's single sided instead of double sided and there are no clips holding the heat spreaders on like the older set has. I haven't tried OCing them yet but I'm wondering if Crucial went cheaper with the chips also. My old ones would go to 1066 easy. Has anyone else ordered any Ballistix Tracers lately and recieved these cheap ones?

 

[espslyxerx2]

Ya, I noticed the exact same thing. They dont seem to perform less though. Their is another thread about the same thing. The guy called Crucial and they told him they disc. those. O well, Ill OC my 4 gigs tonight to see how far they will go. I have them at 960 right now with no problem.

btw, the E3110 friggin rocks!!!! I could run superpi at 4.5 ghz no problem!!!

I stable on the E3110 at 4.3 ghz @ 1.3625 V ..... WOOT!

 

[azimuth40]

Are you sure that they are Tracers. 4qtr last year they made a special edition that looked like Tracers but they only had the blue lights. Newegg sold a bunch of them for some anniversery or something.

The pictures on Crucials site seem to show the clips are gone but still says 8 blue leds 4 on each side but one or two rows of red and green leds. Now that 2GB sticks are becoming the norm, I think that bit density on the 1gig sticks has increased making them one sided, considering that is the way memory technology has always advanced.

Crucial simply says "The number of black components on a Ballistix Tracer 240-pin DIMM can vary," sic. ah ram is really just black components, amazing.

I have a set of 512 x 2 that appear to be single sided. I have never opened the static bags and don't wish to now.

I am waiting to see if they will produce a 4 gig kit soon, those should be double sided again.

 

[gb123]

These are Ballistix Tracers. They have the 8 blue LEDS on the bottom and they have 8 LEDS on the top alternating between red and Green. My old ones I bought in January have the same 8 blue LEDS on bottom and 2 rows of 8 LEDS on top alternating between Red and Green. I looked on the Crucial web site also and my new ones look like that picture. My old ones look like the picture on ClubIT's web site (where I bought them).

Here is the pic of the old style.
http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=CA4360007#

Here is the new style.
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=BL2KIT12864AL804

 

[Gravemind123]

The new tracers are based on higher density chips that will most likely not be quite as overclockable as the old D9GMH/D9GKX based ones. That said, the review I've seen of the chips being used seem to indicate they can overclock to at least 1066MHz, and that's with a double-sided version of what you have(2GB per stick instead of 1GB per stick)

 

[gb123]

Thank you for the replys. I really like crucial memory and hope these are as good as the older style. I can live with the cosmetic differences as long as they perform.

 

[Guest]

I just sent my single sided back after they died and he found a set of double sided to match the other double sided I had already.

Yes the single sided don't o/c as well and their voltage is lower than the double sided.

I thought something was wrong when I ordered 4g and 2 came single and 2 came double sided but one tech told me they will run the same at 2.2v.... WRONG. After a month the single sided ones died.

Thank god they still had some of the double sided in stock to replace these. The service guy at Crucial was great for the swap

 

[Gravemind123]

I had one of my double-sided die at 2.2v, I RMA-ed just before they switched to single-side, but I'm keeping my new set at lower voltages as they work fine at 1.8v at DDR2-800, my old ones would not work at 1.8v in dual-channel so I'm hoping that means this set is D9GKX and the old one was D9GMH(which normally needs high voltage where as GKX doesn't and can get to the same clock-speeds with lower voltages).
From what I've read the new single-sided are D9HNL, which should run for sure at 1000MHz with the right voltage.

 

[truehighroller]

That is because those are the newer chips man. That means they hold more on each chip. The clips that were on them were faulty. They had trouble because people like me started rmaing them because the clips would clamp so hard that they would literally pull the heatsink away from the chips and the chips would over heat and burn out within a couple of months. The ones that are coming to my house Monday are the single sided ones. If you have double sided ones I can almost gurantee they that the heat sink is pulling away from the chips at the bottom and mine however are the ddr2 1066 models or ddr2 pc8500 models however you like to call it.