Fastest DDR laptop RAM? Current or past!

I know it'll make zero noticable change but many tiny changes might make up one small performance increase!

Wondering if there are specific brands/chips of DDR (not DDR2/3!) that are known to be faster? Better timings or just better quality?

There were plenty of gaming machines in that era; what'd they ship with?

It's OK if the sticks are no longer manufactured; we can go back to when this RAM was current!

 

I think the fastest I have heard of is 400 MHz. I have no idea about overclocking and I'm not sure if it could even be done. The problem with a system from that era was that the RAM was not actually the bottleneck in many applications. CPUs were. The fastest DDR module could still transmit over 3 GBps. The DDR3 that's ubiquitous today can do about 12.8. That's a 4x increase in bandwidth. On the other hand, CPUs have become a lot more powerful. Well optimized programs can actually run from 2x to much faster on Haswell as opposed to SB. That's just well optimized software though, not something you'd see in the average user's system but it goes to show that the CPU is what is going to be the main bottleneck here.

 

Most memory brands then as now offered a line of 'tuned' memory - e.g. Kingston HyperX. Also like today, no single brand stands out ...the differences are too small to quantify even with repeated synthetic benchmarking (within the acceptable margin of error).

Primary differences between RAM of the same type (e.g. DDR So-DIMM) past and present:
-Frequency
-Timings (CAS latency)
-Voltage
-Chip configuration
-Lithography (nm process)

The highest quality RAM is found from companies who actually produce their chips and not just contract someone to make them. Samsung is a top-quality RAM manufacturer, they operate some of the most advance fabs in the world.

In the DDR era, three frequencies were common: PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333) and the fastest, PC3200 (DDR400). Memory specs made a bigger difference then as compared to today since processors were much slower (like today though, capacity was the most important). Dual-channel memory made a big difference but most notebooks in that era were single-channel; dual-channel was generally reserved for the Pentium IV systems with specific chipsets (then the memory controller was located on the motherboard's Northbridge).
So the fastest configuration back then would have been 2x 1GB PC3200 running in dual-channel mode. CAS latency 2.5 or 3.

You can still readily buy that memory today. Newegg has plenty.

 

Completely wrong on all counts.

In the era of DDR, memory was a much greater bottleneck than it is today. Above all, timings, and secondly speed were both critical to performance, and everybody was going crazy trying to get the best chips.

The highest official spec for DDR is DDR-400, but companies put out much faster "unofficial" modules. I can recall there being up to DDR-550 for the desktop, but DDR-400 is likely the highest for laptops. They key to great DDR memory is not what brand the modules are from. The key to good DDR is the specific memory chips on the module. Many high end memory modules used mediocre chips, and many value modules used the best chips. So everyone was always about finding out what chips came on what specific modules, or what were the chances of getting them. Sticks of the good stuff, regardless of the brand of the modules, sold for a pretty penny. I remember going to BestBuy, Circuit City, and CompUSA to find modules with good chips on them to sell online for a profit. Those were the days!

The most famous of all are the chips from Winbond. Their BH-5 is legendary. Their BH-6 and CH-5 chips are among the best as well. They could all run CL2 at DDR-400 speeds. You could also overvolt them to get even higher performance. The speeds and timings offered by these were second to none. There are lots of other decent chips from Hynix, Samsung, and Infineon. Anyway, if you buy any laptop DDR-400 memory with a CAS latency of 2, the memory is good. Any currently sold as new DDR memory uses junk modules, so your best bet is to go to Ebay and wait for something good to come along, or to post a wanted ad in computer forums.

 

Yes! I do remember the overclocking DDR for desktops back then. Didn't know if it was ever available in laptop form but there were plenty of gaming laptops then; Alienware, Sager, etc.

And good to know current memory offerings aren't as good. How would I go about looking up RAM based on specific chips for sale though? I'll have to find stick or kit model numbers unless the seller is aware of what they have!

 

It is usually considered good mannerisms to back up your claims with sources when you discredit someone. I don't see any in your post.

Here's a DDR vs DDR2 comparison. You see a gain of what? 5%? Okay lets say you believe AMD sucks at making DDR controllers (which are really not that big a deal for a CPU manufacturer). That still gives you at most 10%. Here's one of DDR2 vs DDR3. Let's assume that the DDR3 is overclocked which we all know does not give us a whole lot better performance. That's another 5-10% maximum. Now compare the CPUs processing power. The inclusion of AVX alone has doubled performance. SSE has increased register size by 2 since its introduction and the pipelines in the core i series give much better performance. You compare a Pentium 3 or even a P4 with hyperthreading at 3 GHz vs a core i7 today and you are looking at several TIMES the performance. The DDR3 controller is not able to provide you with several times more the data. AKA larger bottleneck.

 

If I remember well the best DDR modules were equipped with Samsung TCCD chips and they had 600MHz variants near CAS 2.5-4-4-7 with 2.8 V.
Patriot was building with these TCCD chips even 700MHz modules .

 

Since you chose to post a link from Anandtech, take a look at this one: AnandTech | =F-A-S-T= DDR Memory: 2-2-2 Roars on the Scene

See how performance changes with the memory frequency? Some of the benchmarks show a completely linear increase! That shows how dramatic memory speeds and timing affected performance during the DDR era. You obviously weren't a computer enthusiast back then, but man, those were the days. Overclocking was never as good before or since.

On Ebay most of the time there will be the pictures of the memory modules, so if you look at the chips you can read them. Although a couple of quick tips are that the modules with the top chips will never be 1GB, only 512MB or less, and the chips will not be BGA, the squares, they will be TSOP, the rectangles.

 

well for desktop there was the ultra rare DDR-500 but, i don't know that it ever came to laptops.

 

I owned bh-5 chips back in the day. AMD 3000+, Newcastle ore + dfi nf2 mbo + Corsair 400 MHz rated modules went to 500 with ease while retaining 2-2-2-5 latencies. Ofcourse i had to tweak psu a bit because mbo wouldnt let me go ove 3v for memory and for those speeds i needed at least 3.3 (for those who dont know memory was rated at 2.5v)... it wasnt u til first ore 2 duos and 800+ MHz memory moduled an one got much better memory bench scores...

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Actually it was the speed of the fsb and not the ram speed that was causing that difference with ddr