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Enhanced Memory Systems HSDRAM

Company Website: http://www.pc133memory.com

The original HSDRAM PC133 (rated at 3:2:2) also showed excellent performance way beyond the PC133 specifications:

The original HSDRAM module and a close-up of the chips and the sticker with the characteristic 322 timing specification

3:3:3

At the least aggressive timing setting, the old HSDRAM DIMM ran flawlessly up to 166 MHz on the i815 chipset. Not bad for an 18 months old DIMM.

2:2:2

At the fastest timing setting, the age of the DIMM slightly showed, in that the fastest stable operation was possible at 143 MHz. 143 MHz at 2:2:2 timing, however, is still remarkable, especially, considering the age of the module which still outperforms most of its younger competitors.

One peculiarity of the original HSDRAM DIMMs is that they like to operate at increased V I/O. At the standard 3.3 V, these DIMMs sometimes are a bit flaky, thus, it is advised to increase V I/O to 3.5 or even 3.7 V where possible, especially at CAS-2 operation.

HSDRAM 150

The new HSDRAM 150 DIMMs are built using shrink parts (chips) that were developed to reduce size and, thus, the time it takes the Column Address Strobe (CAS) to hit the address specified. This feature has two functional consequences:

Enhanced HSDRAM 150 and close-up of the chip etching

• Due to the smaller die size, the voltage requirements are lower than with the original HSDRAM, in fact, increasing V I/O beyond 3.4 often has an adverse effect on stability.
• The smaller die size causes a lower signal to noise ratio for sensing the signals stored in the memory cells. This in turn necessitates a longer RAS-to-CAS delay and as a consequence, the HSDRAM 150 DIMMs need to be run with a tRCD of 3 cycles
• Unlike increasing the CAS latency, increasing tRCD from 2 to 3 cycles causes only a minor performance hit in the order of no more than 1.3% in extreme cases of very memory intensive graphics applications. In applications utilizing the CPU cache, the performance hit goes completely unnoticed.

3:3:3

As in the case with the Corsair CAS-2 DIMMs, we were not able to push the HSDRAM 150 over its limits with currently available chipsets. That is, there were zero stability problems even at 166 MHz at the least aggressive timing settings.

2:3:2

The big surprise came in the CAS-2 scenario. 2:3:2 timing settings did not impress the HSDRAM 150 at all and the DIMM was running flawlessly even at 166 MHz on the Solano chipset. On the VIA KT 133 chipset-based MSI K7T Pro the DIMM ran flawlessly up to 157 MHz (the limit of the chipset).

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