One of the perks of manufacturing your own DRAM is that it can labeled with anything you want, without having to sand anything down first. In the case of Crucial's Ballistix, the FPGAs are labeled as Ballistix memory. Everything else is pretty non descript, we see the markings "D9CHM" and "-3V."

By default the DDR-2 Ballistix memory is capable of running up to 333 MHz (or PC5300 speeds) while maintaining 4-4-4 memory timings at a voltage of 1.9V. It appears as though Crucial is not to wary of consumers raising the voltage a bit to reach those higher speeds either. The memory timings are on the conservative side but then again so are most PC5300 DIMM's on the market.

While we did warn you earlier about removing the heatspreader off the DIMM, I want to really emphasize that FBGA DRAM modules are very delicate! PCstats learned this the hard way when we ended up killing one of the sticks in the process of removing the heatspreader so that we could provide you with a clear shot of the DRAM. While there was no visible damage to the memory module, it never worked again after this picture was taken. I suspect a broken solder ball connection is the reason.

As AMD has not jumped on the DDR2 bandwagon just yet, and are not anticipated to do so until the middle of 2005 at the earliest, that makes Intel the only game in town when it comes to DDR2 RAM.

At the time of these tests, the i925X-based test motherboard we are using is affected by Intel's FSB lock. This means there we'll have to come back and retest Crucial's DDR-2 Ballistix memory for overclocking again in the future. In the mean time, let's see how these DDR-2 modules performed!

A Little Overclocking to Start

After dropping in the yellow Ballistix DDR2 RAM into a Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D motherboard, we set about changing the memory multiplier to 2.66x, and tightened the timings to 3-3-3. To not much surprise, the Ballistix DDR2 had no problems running at these timings, at PC4200 speeds.

Next was the FSB overclocking adventure, but that was uneventful all the way up to 216 MHz. Anything higher than that and the system would refuse to POST. Raising voltages or loosening up on memory timings didn't help things either. I'd expect the Ballistix to go a little further, and when we get a more overclocking friendly i925x motherboard we will be resting the Crucial Ballistix memory to see how high they can reach.