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Super Talent T800UX2GC4 Review |
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Long Name, Big Value |
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By Josh Walrath |
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Super Talent has been around for 20+ years now, but until the past two years it was a company that catered mainly to OEMs and SBs. Super Talent obviously saw the success that Corsair and OCZ experienced in the retail and enthusiast market, and it had all the tools needed to jump into the fray. Marketing was a problem for Super Talent though, and to rectify the situation they hired Joe James of Tyan and Corsair fame. Joe has certainly worked hard to put the name Super Talent out there, and it just so happens that the marketing efforts were not all sound and fury. Super Talent actually had some good products to push forward into this very competitive market. About a year ago Joe was able to send me 2 GB of fast DDR2 for the AMD AM2 launch, and I have used that memory nonstop since that time. I kept promising that I would write a review of the product, but time and again it was pushed aside for many reasons. Finally I have been able to sit down and compose my thoughts on these DIMMS. While I received them a year ago, the product is still for sale today and at a very attractive price. The Basics While Super Talent does not have exotic sounding names like OCZ and Corsair do, the branding tells far more about the product than the others can. T800UX2GC4 means that these are matched 2 x 1 GB DIMMS (X2G) running at 800 MHz (T800) with a CAS latency of 4 (C4). Once a user knows how the system works, it becomes obvious exactly what each model brings to the table. Unfortunately, these names are not exactly catchy! Still, most enthusiasts do not care for the product’s name, but rather for the performance and value it can bring to their system. Super Talent is one of the few memory makers that actually run their memory faster than the average specifications for high speed PC6400 DDR2. Most enthusiast class DIMMS run at 4.4.4.12 timings, while Super Talent has these particular products running at 4.4.3.8. This is not a huge difference, but every bit of speed helps. Super Talent specs these timings with the memory running at 2.2 volts. This is well above the 1.8 volts that comprise the base DDR-2 specification, but it is certainly lower than the older 2.5/2.6 volts that DDR1 ran at. The initial set of DIMMS I received from Super Talent was able to run at those timings at 1.9 volts. This past Spring I bought another pair of these DIMMS and they only run at those timings at 2.1 volts. Apparently Super Talent has changed the specifications for these DIMMS within the past year. Looking around it seems that the product has had a variety of Micron and ProMos chips through the product’s lifetime, some of which have been phased out. The current ICs used are comparable in clock performance, and the Brainpower PCB that Super Talent uses is quite good. Super Talent slaps a nice, heavy, blue aluminum heatsink on each side of the DIMM. These rarely get very warm, and there is enough surface area to dissipate highly overvolted and overclocked DIMMS. The build quality on these DIMMS is really quite good, and I have noticed no issues with running them. In the past year that I have been using them, I have had the least amount of troubles with motherboard compatibility than any other DIMM set I have used from manufacturers such as Geil, G-Skill, and Patriot. I would say that compatibility is right up there with Corsair. Part of the compatibility equation is able to run at 1.8v on SPD timings. The SPD on these DIMMS are set at 5:5:5:15 at 800 MHz. So when a motherboard starts up for the first time, it can run these DIMMS from SPD with stock voltage applied.
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