September '98 PC100 SDRAM Comparison

The letter grades were achieved by averaging the two scores for each category (CAS-2 & CAS-3).

Conclusion

As you can tell from the benchmarks, all of the 7 SDRAM DIMMs compared here worked flawlessly at the 100 and 112MHz FSB settings, however once you approach 124MHz things get a bit more spread out. 

The Corsair, Mushkin Hyundai and NEC Memory Man DIMMs didn't seem to agree with the 124MHz FSB setting at a CAS Latency of 2 however bumping it up to 3 did help the Corsair module achieve that 100% rating. 

The best module for the 133MHz FSB setting seems to be the Mushkin Samsung SDRAM, while it uses the same chips as the other Samsung DIMMs (excluding the Corsair module) its PCB seems to be a better product and therefore had no problem achieving that 100% rating at 133MHz/CAS-3.  The Advanced Megatrends, and Azzo Samsung DIMMs all use the same Tanisys PCB's which most likely kept them from performing as well as the Mushkin and newer Memory Man DIMM's at 133MHz, however you also must keep in mind that overall stability also depends on the other components in your system. 

While your RAM may work at 124MHz or 133MHz, it is doubtful that your video card (especially if you have an AGP video card) will be able to withstand this setting.  Anything above 112MHz for most AGP cards seems to be the drop off zone in terms of stability and reliability.  So if you don't plan on going above 112MHz, all of the modules here are fair game, however if a winner must be chosen, it would have to be the Mushkin or Memory Man Samsung SDRAM which achieved straight 100% ratings in all categories with the exception of the 133MHz/CAS-2 setting which no module could work successfully at. 

In the end it comes down to a price war between Mushkin and the Memory Man, let the best techman win. 

Purchase Links

• Advanced Megatrends: http://www.megacom.com

• Azzo: http://www.azzo.com

• Corsair: http://www.tccomputers.com

• Memory Man: http://www.memman.com

• Mushkin: http://www.mushkin.com