Corsair was the first memory manufacturer to send us DDR2 DIMMs.

Basically everybody will try to participate in the race for DDR2 market shares. Corsair, Kingston, Micron/Crucial and Samsung were among the first companies that sent us working products for review. In the meantime GeIL, Kingmax, OCZ, Mushkin and others should also be well prepared by now.

Most DDR2-533 memory DIMMs are validated to run CL4.0-4-4-12 timings. However, the Micron memory was able to run at CL3.0-3-3-6 timing. Sadly, the faster timings have practically zero impact on the performance numbers. It looks like DDR2 will put its name on the map only by virtue of its clock speed potential. We did a couple of benchmark runs with DDR400, DDR2-400 and DDR2-533 to get a feeling of how DDR2 memory will scale. Each test was done in single and dual channel setups.

Intel included a pair of 512 MB Micron DIMMs with their reviewer's kit, but we also received some DDR2 DIMMs directly from Crucial. Basically, these products are identical.

Being one of the biggest memory vendors worldwide, Kingston was very fast with providing DDR2-533 as well.

That's the memory Intel provided with their reviewer's kits.

The Samsung DDR2 DIMMs, courtesy of Gigabyte.