Verdict: Memory to write home about
Corsair's new RAM is gr8. Low latency, good perf + big lights. Has LCD screen so U can C info or UR own msg. Not cheap tho. Still, V. cool.
Writing CPC reviews as text messages would have its advantages, not least the fact that I could do a month's work while sitting on the bus heading into town. There would be some disadvantages, though. Evaluating computer products in 150 characters would mean that a comprehensive assessment would remain on the cutting-room floor, along with a lot of consonants.
Reviews might be out of its league, but a text is all you need to boast about an overclock, and Corsair's new Xpert memory modules allow you to do exactly that, as each DIMM has a huge LCD attachment. Want to brag about your CPU's FSB? Propose to your partner? (Don't laugh, someone on Slashdot will do this by the end of the year.) All this and more is possible, as the Xperts' displays can show your own custom messages. Although each LCD has only ten digits, it can scroll as many as 23 characters per message and display up to seven custom messages.
The Xperts' LCDs aren't just for insulting or propositioning your fellow geeks, however. As well as custom messages, they can also display the module's voltage, temperature, clock speed and bandwidth (expressed as Jedec speed - for example, PC3200). Each display unit also sports bright blue Corsair logos and what looks like a two-bar spectrum analyser from a 1980s boom-box. This flickers up and down, though not to the rhythms of Run DMC. Instead, it shows what Corsair nebulously defines as 'memory activity'. Corsair really has crammed a lot of lights onto the top of the Xpert DIMMs, and when the PC is running, they provide a barrage of sugary light. The activity bars pulse away, the blue ship glows and red letters scroll across the display.
The LCD panel is housed in a plastic bar that attaches to a custom set of pins on the top of the DIMM. As the display is 2cm wide, it overhangs the RAM and can obscure any close-lying DIMM sockets. Fortunately, the LCD can be attached in two ways, so it can be positioned either next to, or facing away from nearby modules. The Xperts should be at home in most motherboards.
Underneath all the lights, the Xpert modules are low-latency PC3200 memory with tight 2-2-2-5 timings. Apart from the fact that the Xperts' preferred voltage is an electrifying 2.75V, they're very similar to the Corsair TwinX 3200XL modules that we tested in our DDR Labs test (see Issue 18, p70), in which they were close runners-up to the OCZ and Patriot DIMMs. This was confirmed by the Xperts' overclocking abilities, as both the TwinX and Xpert modules topped out at 480MHz, with the latencies dropped to 2.5-3-3-8.
However, the Xperts' performance at both stock and overclocked frequencies lagged behind that of the TwinX modules. The difference wasn't huge, but it was measurable - 2fps fewer in Doom 3 but only slightly slower at video encoding. In fact, at stock speeds the Xperts were slower than all the low-latency modules in the Labs test, bar the GeIL memory in Doom 3, although they outpaced the basic PC3200 DIMMs we also tested.
Overclocking to 480MHz isn't an insignificant increase, considering the Xperts' rated speed of 400MHz, and we found that removing the LCD unit also yielded a small performance increase.
CONCLUSION
The Xpert modules are slower than other low-latency DIMMs and cost considerably more. However, these criticisms are similar to those of people who regard writing in txt speak as proof of the decline in English grammar, as they both miss the point. Xperts are great for those who want something flashy inside their windowed case without totally sacrificing performance.
