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Manufacturer: GeIL
By: Jack Kolesar 03-13-04

Introduction

I recently purchased a GeIL 512MB Dual-Channel PC-3200 Ultra Platinum DDR Memory Kit for a system I was building and figured, "What the hell? Might as well review it." The Ultra Platinum 512MB Kit is by no means new to the market. However, it is still a current offering from GeIL and is available for a very reasonable price of around $100.00. Golden Emperor International Ltd (GeIL) is a Taiwanese based company with locations in the US and China. Recently, they have been branching out and have a fairly large dealer base which includes companies such as NewEgg, ABS Computers, and Fry's. Formed in 1997, GeIL manufactures their own PCBs and is currently competing in the PC enthusiast market exclusively specializing in high-performance memory modules. There's the background. Now, let's have a look at the product.

One thing that makes GeIL unique is the acrylic packaging that houses their modules. A lot of you have seen this already. I'm not going to go on about it. It's a plastic case. I'm sure there is a plethora of other uses for it. Most importantly, it got the memory to me in one piece.

Here you can see GeIL's "Tin Coated Platinum Copper Heat Spreaders" (damn, that's a lot of metals). The modules come vacuum-packed in an anti-static bag. It smells like dirty pennies when opened. Mmm... pennies....

Specifications

From GeIL's website:

184pin, Non-ECC, Un-buffered, high performance DDR memory modules.

Hand Picked GeIL 5ns 32x8 Density DDR Chip.

6 Layers Ultra Low Noises Shielded PCB with Gold 30u" Plating.

Optimized SPD for Dual Channel DDR motherboards.

Copper Heat Spreader.

Lifetime Warranty .

CAS 2 6-3-3 @ DDR400 PC3200,

2.55V-2.95V

Retail package with blue acrylic case and instructions

As you can see, the modules have some nice features. While only rated at 5ns, the memory timings are are very good, running at 2-3-3-6. In addition, you can expect good compatibility with a 6-layer PCB. The lifetime warranty is also a plus.

Test System

Test System was as follows:

CPU	Athlon XP 3200+
MoBo	Abit NF7-S
Vid Card	Radeon 9600
Mem	256MB X2 Dual CH
OS	Windows XP
Tests	Sandra 2004, UT 2004, and MemTest86+

The Test

I first setup the BIOS to configure the modules by SPD. You can see in the CPU-Z screenshot that everything was identified properly and booted into Windows smoothly. Next, I used a program call Memtest-86+ to validate the memory. The test ran for 5 loops in the default configuration and did not find any errors.

To benchmark the memory, I ran it in two configurations. The first one was at the default 2-3-3-6. I then ran the same programs at 2.5-4-4-6 to represent a "Value RAM" configuration. Tests were run three times on fresh boots and the average was taken. I chose SiSoft Sandra for a synthetic benchmark and a UT 2004 Flyby at 640x480 for a "real world" gaming benchmark. The results are in the graphs below.

You can see a marginal increase in the memory bandwidth test by a tune of about 3%. Not a bad performance gain for just a timings increase. Keep in mind that this is a purely synthetic benchmark though.

At low resolutions, UT 2004 see about a 4.5% increase in framerate. Again, good results. However, most people will not be playing UT2004 at 640x480. It is more likely that the video card is going to be the bottleneck in this game. When I ran the test at 1024x768 there was no increase in framerate whatsoever. Obviously, due to the limits of the Radeon 9600.

Overclocking / Conclusion

The overclocking results I got with the GeIL Ultra were less than stellar. In fact, they were non-existent. Anything above 406 MHz was not stable. I tried increasing the DDR voltage to 2.9V (up from 2.6V) and lowering the timings to 3-4-4-7. Still, I could not get any higher than 406MHz without lockups or non-POSTs. This isn't all that surprising considering that GeIL makes and rates their other, higher-end modules for the overclocking enthusiast. After all, there is a reason they sell PC-3500 to PC-4400. Those modules use much faster chips which are rated from 3.5-4.5 nanoseconds. Overall however, I was impressed with the quality of construction, the low latency, and the price of the GeIL Ultra Platinum PC-3200. It's a great choice if you are building a new system that isn't going to be overclocked. If you do plan on overclocking your rig, the GeIL PC-4000 or PC-4400 is probably a better match. To check out GeIL's complete line of memory modules, visit www.geilusa.com.

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