Developer: Crucial | Product type: System Memory | Price: £46.79

Fusion Hardware reviews Crucial’s DDR range of system RAM products for the home and business user. In this review we look at one of Crucial’s 256MB 184-PIN DIMM UNBUFF PC2100 modules. Crucial are one of the leading manufacturers of system memory and their products have excelled in quality and value for money. Over 90% of Crucial transactions are dealt with over the web which enables them to create an efficient low cost service at great customer value. Many of their customers will believe that their trade mark slogan (“We are The Memory Experts™”) is true to the products and services which they provide to so many consumers each year. So how does their DDR range cope in today’s modern computer systems?

Benefits of DDR memory
DDR (Double Data Rate) memory provides users with double the transfer rate over the older and cheaper SDRAM memory running at a new and improved 266 MHz as supposed to the older 133 MHz of SDRAM. The dubbed PC2100 memory will produce 2.1GB/sec of bandwidth transfer. DDR memory was used for some time in graphics card products before it became available to main board systems. This is because manufacturers of graphics card products were quick to see the opportunities which DDR memory would bring to the performance aspects of their products and now that the range is available to consumers DDR memory has introduced a new boundary to performance in home and business systems.

While DDR memory exists as very much the affordable solution to performance memory upgrades the existence of the more expensive and faster RDRAM memory provides for the larger organisation or extreme IT enthusiast. RDRAM is likely to be the next affordable performance upgrade option to DDR just like DDR has done to SDRAM but for the time being most consumers are happy with DDR.

Many people today still do not see the full benefits of system RAM. Generally people would think that video RAM is enough but the more system RAM you have is still a key beneficial feature to getting those demanding games to run, especially with Windows XP. The more system RAM you have the more space your programs have to load and the less your CPU and hard drive have to work. Of course all system RAM does is store information and keeps temporary data available for the CPU to quickly load. Because RAM is faster than your hard drive access time games will generally load faster. This is of course taking into consideration that the data of the game has already been stored in the available memory. The more memory you have the less your computer will have to work and the faster your games or applications will run.

When using Windows XP you have to take into consideration the amount of system RAM that the operating system will need to use. On this occasion we ran Windows XP, Photoshop 7.0 and Word XP on 512MB of DDR memory and quickly found that over 50% of available memory had already been consumed, this is without running any 3D applications. Generally 512MB of DDR memory would be more than enough for running every day tasks and 3D applications although the more demanding PC user might be more combatable with 768MB of available memory. The key thing to remember when getting RAM for your system is that you can never have enough and with the low prices of DDR memory this is the best time to get an upgrade for your system.

What DDR memory to get?
There are quite a few different types of DDR memory available and this is where some confusion has entered the market. Crucial has recently installed an easy upgrade system to their website which makes it both easy and quick for consumers to find the right RAM for their system. When looking at RAM you still need to take into consideration what you are going to be using it for. If you are going to use your RAM in a system which will be connected to a busy network you may want to consider DDR memory with ECC (Error Correction Control). This additional technology is good for network PC’s which transfer a significant amount of data from PC to PC and prevents errors in data. If you want to use your RAM in a system which will primarily run a lot of games you may wish to go without ECC (Error Correction Control) as this technology can slightly decrease performance in applications and is unnecessary for home users. Apart from that there is not a lot more you need to know the Crucial website will point you in the right direction!

Conclusion
The affordable price and trademark standards of Crucial memory for many make it a clear choice for memory upgrades. With the demanding performance related aspects of today’s modern 2D and 3D applications DDR memory from Crucial Technology is both an affordable and realistic option for today’s home and business consumers. This is why we are giving Crucial memory a “Best Buy Award” and the “Award for Excellence”.