What would have been the best DDR3 in 2008 when nehalem launched?

[nnimrod]

Would it have been Samsung 1Gbit Rev. D? Hypers didn't show up until 2009 right? Also any examples of actual kits that were out before the end of 2008 would be appreciated!

[TerraRaptor]

D9GTR (CSX Diablo 2000 for example) was doing great, from 1600 6-5-5 till 2000 7-6-5 - these were not popular with Nehalem because of high vdimm requirements that was killing IMC until <0.5v difference rule was worked out. Hypers have appeared in late 2008 btw. 

Edited July 12, 2020 by TerraRaptor

[unityofsaints]

9 minutes ago, TerraRaptor said:

<0.5v difference rule

Between Vcore and Vdimm? Is this for all Nehalem or just 775?

[TerraRaptor]

1 hour ago, unityofsaints said:

Between Vcore and Vdimm? Is this for all Nehalem or just 775?

Vdimm and Vtt difference should be no more than 0.4-0.5v as far as I know - higher difference will kill cpu. I heard of people pushing 2.0v into RAM without bad consequences following that rule. I'm talking of nehalem - no such issue with 775. 

[GRIFF]

1 hour ago, unityofsaints said:

Between Vcore and Vdimm? Is this for all Nehalem or just 775?

Only for LGA 1366 where IMC Is in the cpu

Edited July 12, 2020 by GRIFF

[ground]

I've never ran into that issue, I've ran 2.3V Vdimm with 1.5V VTT without consequences. Also 2.1V vdimm with 1.4V VTT for many hours, with at least a dozen different Chips. I suspect it mostly affects ES Nehalem chips and maybe C0 stepping which I never bothered testing since they tend to be significantly worse then even average D0s. The only source with actual statistics on this I've managed to find seems to confirm this as well. I've heard some people get better stability at a <0.5V delta but never managed confirming this for myself.

 

January 2009 review of Hyper: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?214317-A-DATA-Triple-channel-2133X-quot-ELPIDA-quot-ICs-2000-CL7-8-7-20-1T-1-55V-Memtest

[TaPaKaH]

Back in the early 1366 days (Q4 2008) people used to bench D9GTR on this platform. Samsung 1Gbit D (then called HCF0) was seen as an inferior option. Then (in Q2 2009) Hypers came along and the game changed.

Out of D9GTR, I would say that Corsair 1800C7 Dominators were seen as the best. Sure, CSX Diablo were Hyped, but the binning was not centralised, meaning that their local resellers could assign specs to kits that were nowhere near passing.

Edited July 12, 2020 by TaPaKaH

[TASOS]

In Nehalem (early) era ... Micron chips ruled

D9GTR , D9GTS , D9JNL

I'll say that was Cellshock era too.

 

Edited July 12, 2020 by TASOS

[nnimrod]

So it is D9s... Thanks very much! Now I feel even worse for letting a CSX Diablo 2000 kit get away on ebay. 

[ground]

Hyper still easily beats those, why do you insist on using what was best when the platform was released instead of what turned out to be best a couple months later?

[ground]

41 minutes ago, 4n0nym0u5b3nch3r said:

Because Hypers tend to shit themselves quite easily, I guess.

Never had a stick die on me, though I’ve had several DOA sticks.

Hypers (MGH-e, avoid MNH-e) ran at sane volts tend to last a long time and should be faster then you can get D9GT. No point handicapping yourself with a weaker IC. 

[nnimrod]

2 hours ago, ground1556 said:

Never had a stick die on me, though I’ve had several DOA sticks.

Hypers (MGH-e, avoid MNH-e) ran at sane volts tend to last a long time and should be faster then you can get D9GT. No point handicapping yourself with a weaker IC. 

I'm not handicapping myself. As a random curiosity project I decided to spec out the ultimate "Dream machine" PC build that you could have made in the 2008 calendar year. And I figured everything else out about it, but wasn't sure about the memory. 

 

As for buying the Diablo 2000 kit on ebay, it's still sort of relevant for 775 and AM3, and collecting ram isn't exactly unheard of. 

[TerraRaptor]

Intel SkullTrail was another option for 2008 dream machine:)

[ground]

Corsair 1800c7 is probably the most available strong D9GT* bin in that case, though still not easy to track down.

[nnimrod]

6 hours ago, TerraRaptor said:

Intel SkullTrail was another option for 2008 dream machine:)

I had no idea it was that old... I thought briefly of the SR-2, and then dismissed it because I then remembered that the SR-2 came out rather late in the game for 1366. 

I have already put hours into picking all the components and making sure they would work together. 

 

This all started since I finally aquired a good condition Trinitron, and am considering building a retro computer around it. Problem is I want it to be able to play Crysis, and I think 2008 is about as old as you can go and still get 40+ fps in Crysis at 1600x1200. 2008 is also a magic year because it's when Intel released the superb X-25M SSD (And X-25E). Well I suppose I'll read up on late '08 Skulltrail motherboards now.

 

Edit: Skulltrail unfortunately can't really compete with Nehalem due to the huge gap in memory performance. Dual channel Buffered DDR2 vs. Triple channel unbuffered DDR3 is no contest. And to make it worse, some Skulltrail boards only had 4 DIMM slots.

Edited July 13, 2020 by nnimrod

[DR4G00N]

On 7/12/2020 at 4:48 PM, nnimrod said:

I had no idea it was that old... I thought briefly of the SR-2, and then dismissed it because I then remembered that the SR-2 came out rather late in the game for 1366. 

I have already put hours into picking all the components and making sure they would work together. 

 

This all started since I finally aquired a good condition Trinitron, and am considering building a retro computer around it. Problem is I want it to be able to play Crysis, and I think 2008 is about as old as you can go and still get 40+ fps in Crysis at 1600x1200. 2008 is also a magic year because it's when Intel released the superb X-25M SSD (And X-25E). Well I suppose I'll read up on late '08 Skulltrail motherboards now.

 

Edit: Skulltrail unfortunately can't really compete with Nehalem due to the huge gap in memory performance. Dual channel Buffered DDR2 vs. Triple channel unbuffered DDR3 is no contest. And to make it worse, some Skulltrail boards only had 4 DIMM slots.

Skulltrail doesn't actually do too bad if your comparing dual quads vs 4c/8t Nehalem, it will actually score a fair bit higher in Cinebench and the like according to my old subs.

Although the memory config does slow it down in memory heavy programs so it's a bit more even then. Skulltrail is also Quad channel FB-DIMM not Dual and having only 4 slots isn't really an issue since it can use 4GB or even some 8GB FB-DIMM's.

[nnimrod]

3 hours ago, 4n0nym0u5b3nch3r said:

Do yourself a favor, stay away from any SSD not made in the past three years. A 860 Evo will decimate anything made before 2017 short of a 850 Evo/Pro.

I'm sure it would, but the point here is retro hardware.