The company Crucial offers high performance PC2-8500, PC2-8000, PC2-6400 and PC2-5300 modules,
but they also offer several inexpensive DDR2 alternatives like e.g. the PC2-4200 modules.
The high performance series of Crucial has been already reviewed and overclocked on ocinside.de,
so it's time to write an overclocking review about the latest 2GB PC2-4200 kit.
This Crucial DDR2-533 memory kit supports the ECC (error correction code) feature,
which is particularly very important for servers.
In this review you'll see if and how high the current PC2-4200 Crucial RAM with ECC can be overclocked.

Many thanks for the support with the CT2KIT12872AA53E 2GB PC2 4200 / DDR2 533 CL4 ECC kit by Crucial.

The 2 GB kit contains 2x 1024 MB 240-pin DIMM DDR2-533 (PC2-4200) memory modules and has at present
a manufacturer price recommendation of 125 euro (04/2007).
They're available with the upper banner in the Crucial Shop and at our sponsors.

The two well protected memory modules are delivered in this box:

Crucial supplies the two memory modules as well as an English installation guide, which should make it possible for
less experienced users to install them easily.

Here is a picture of the memory modules with the installation guide:

The memory modules comes without heatpreaders (passive heatsinks), so it's necessary to watch the temperature
with higher voltages and/or higher overclocking.
Alternatively it's possible to spend them passive or active memory coolers, which are available in different types
at our sponsors like e.g. OC-Card.de
Crucial by the way grants lifelong warranty (Limited Lifetime Warranty) for the buyer
(all informations to manufacturer conditions are of course without guarantee by ocinside.de).
Beside, the memory modules have an ECC (Error Correction Code) chip to check the data traffic for possible errors
and correct them, if necessary.
ECC memory modules (72-bit) compared to NON ECC (or also Non parity 64-bit) modules are unfortunately a little bit
more expensive (because of the additional chip) and lose a little bit performance.
So they are primarily used in servers for security reasons.
Nevertheless this memory can be used also in usual PCs, but the ECC memory should not be mixed
with NON ECC modules, because this would deactivate the error correction.

Here is a picture of the two Crucial modules with the additional ECC chip in the center of each module ...

Let us begin with the most important part of the test report, because the optics and packing is of course rather
secondary and the highest possible stable performance is the most important factor.
The test results are based on an ASRock AM2XLI eSATA2 SLI motherboard with an Athlon 64 Socket AM2 3000+
CPU on different frequencies depending on the reference clock for the different memory benchmarks.
Thus the multiplier adjustment remains on 9x with all frequencies, because an adjustment for the CPU in half multiplier
steps would be too inaccurate to get nearly the same CPU frequency for all tests.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 is used as the operating system.
The stability was examined with the software Memtest86 and SiSoft Sandra Lite 2007.SP1 program is used for all
benchmarks, since it offers extensive adjustments and a fast result comparison.

First the maximum possible frequency of the memory module was determined.
The memory frequency was increased in small steps with a fixed memory timing of 4-4-4-10 2T and default memory voltage, as long as the detailed memory test with Memtest86 runs without any errors.
This quite long testing time ensured that this frequency works really stable with these modules.

The highest possible frequency with 4-4-4-10 (Tcl Trcd Tras Trp) timings was stable with 398 MHz !

Of course it's possible to run higher frequencies with increased voltages or lower timings, because the frequency values
and timings depends directly from each other.
Officially Crucial specify the highest voltage of 1.8 V without loosing the warranty.
But overclocking is usually higher than the specification, so with heatsinks it should be possible to give them more voltage ;-)
However, the additional ECC is also overclocked and the error correction won't work, if this chip is overclocked too high.

This highest possible frequency was compared to two other settings.
On the one hand 398 MHz with SPD values (these are given by the manufacturer in the SPD IC),
and on the other hand 200 MHz (x2) with SPD values.

By the way, the "Memory Bus Range" is no benchmark value, but this value is quite simple to calculate by the frequency and
is useful for the benchmark comparison.

Here're the benchmark results:

Here's a diagram of the benchmark values:

Here is a direct benchmark result comparison of some DDR2 and DDR memory modules:

The benchmark results of the Crucial PC2-4200 CL4 are slightly behind the results of the G.Skill PC2-6400 modules
and this is a nice result for those modules with ECC.
Nevertheless they can't reach the performance of high-end RAM and runs on default voltage "only" up to approx. 398 MHz
(398 MHz is round about DDR2-800).
Currently the NON-ECC Crucial PC2-5300 CL3 have a better price/performance ratio and allows an unbelievable overclocking.
So if you don't need the ECC feature, they should be preferred.

The Crucial PC2-4200 ECC 2GB kit (CT2KIT12872AA53E) offers advantages with the ECC to protect servers
against data errors and give a more stable system.
The performance is nice for those PC2-4200 memory modules, but they are of course not as high overclockable
as current high performance DDR2 memory modules.
Anyway, typically these Crucial DDR2-533 ECC modules are used in servers, where overclocking isn't very popular.
A review of the NON ECC PC2 4200 modules will follow soon, to make it possible to compare them with the ECC modules.

Many thanks for the support with the CT2KIT12872AA53E 2GB PC2 4200 / DDR2 533 CL4 ECC kit by Crucial.

The 2 GB kit contains 2x 1024 MB 240-pin DIMM DDR2-533 (PC2-4200) memory modules and has at present a manufacturer price recommendation of 125 euro (04/2007). They're available with the upper banner in the Crucial Shop and at our sponsors.

The two well protected memory modules are delivered in this box:

Crucial supplies the two memory modules as well as an English installation guide, which should make it possible for less experienced users to install them easily.

Here is a picture of the memory modules with the installation guide:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 is used as the operating system. The stability was examined with the software Memtest86 and SiSoft Sandra Lite 2007.SP1 program is used for all benchmarks, since it offers extensive adjustments and a fast result comparison.

The highest possible frequency with 4-4-4-10 (Tcl Trcd Tras Trp) timings was stable with 398 MHz !

This highest possible frequency was compared to two other settings. On the one hand 398 MHz with SPD values (these are given by the manufacturer in the SPD IC), and on the other hand 200 MHz (x2) with SPD values.

By the way, the "Memory Bus Range" is no benchmark value, but this value is quite simple to calculate by the frequency and is useful for the benchmark comparison.

Here're the benchmark results:

Here's a diagram of the benchmark values:

Here is a direct benchmark result comparison of some DDR2 and DDR memory modules:

The 2 GB kit contains 2x 1024 MB 240-pin DIMM DDR2-533 (PC2-4200) memory modules and has at present
a manufacturer price recommendation of 125 euro (04/2007).
They're available with the upper banner in the Crucial Shop and at our sponsors.

Crucial supplies the two memory modules as well as an English installation guide, which should make it possible for
less experienced users to install them easily.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 is used as the operating system.
The stability was examined with the software Memtest86 and SiSoft Sandra Lite 2007.SP1 program is used for all
benchmarks, since it offers extensive adjustments and a fast result comparison.

This highest possible frequency was compared to two other settings.
On the one hand 398 MHz with SPD values (these are given by the manufacturer in the SPD IC),
and on the other hand 200 MHz (x2) with SPD values.

By the way, the "Memory Bus Range" is no benchmark value, but this value is quite simple to calculate by the frequency and
is useful for the benchmark comparison.