CORPORATE PROFILE

Crucial offers customers a number of clear advantages over our competitors. As the only consumer memory supplier that's part of a major DRAM manufacturer, we sell high-quality memory that has been qualified and approved by all major original equipment manufacturers. That's important to customers who need quality-assured memory for mission-critical applications.

A lot of memory companies claim to be memory manufacturers even though they're just memory module assemblers. By putting two pre-manufactured memory parts together to build a memory module, they feel they've manufactured memory. Truth is, there is only one company in America that actually manufactures the DRAM chips, the memory printed circuit board, and then assembles them into memory modules - Micron and its memory division, Crucial Technology.

Memory modules are made of two pieces - the DRAM semiconductor chips that store data and the printed circuit board (PCB) connecting the chips to the rest of the computer. There are only a handful of semiconductor manufacturers with the engineering expertise to make DRAM chips. They include Micron, Samsung, Hitachi, and Hyundai. Micron has over 2,000 engineers and a 1.8 million-square-foot manufacturing facility with state-of-the-art clean rooms, memory testers, and exacting quality control. Crucial memory is recognized worldwide for its power and performance. Our memory is used by Apple, Gateway, HP, IBM, Micronpc and more - for good reason. Crucial offers over 110,000 upgrades for more than 20,000 different computers, notebooks, servers and printers. And we guarantee that the high-quality memory you buy is 100% compatible with your system or your money back.

PRODUCT INTRODUCTION

I always laugh when I'm forced to justify the cost of memory which I've selected for a client/user's system.

Client: "But I can pick up the same thing at [insert big box computer shop name] for twenty bucks."

Oh, really. The same thing?

Too many people are willing to spend $300 (or more) on the top of the line ATI video card, but they can't bring themselves to spend more for quality memory. What they don't realize is that their brand new 9800XT won't reach peak performance if the system as a whole is bottlenecked by bad RAM.

Today I will be reviewing Crucial's PC3200 DDR400 memory. It is supposed to perform fantastic, yet carries a very small price tag. I received two identical 512MB memory modules and will be running them in single and dual channel mode. This is only possible if your motherboard supports it. Crucial isn't touting this package as a Dual Channel Memory Kit, which is nice. What a lot of people don't realize is that Dual Channel Memory Kits are just identical sticks of single channel RAM which have 'sometimes' been tested to ensure there are no errors when they are inserted into a motherboard which supports dual channel configurations.

For the purpose of this review, I will test the Crucial RAM in single and dual channel modes. I will also see how far I can push this gig of RAM via overclocking. Crucial has made it very clear that this is mainstream RAM and is not intended for overclocking. In fact, any overclocking will void the warranty.

We at Tweaknews need not worry about warranties, however… so let's see what this memory can do.