Corsair 4400C25: Taking Samsung TCCD to New Heights

Final Words

The Corsair TwinX1024-4400C25 was an outstanding performer in our benchmarks. This was particularly true on the AMD Athlon 64 platform, where Corsair set new records for top memory speed, top 1T Command Rate memory speed, and Top Performance. The Corsair DDR550 is clearly geared to best performance at the top of the memory charts and it succeeds in reaching that goal.

However, this fantastic top-end performance by the Corsair was not without some minor compromise, at least in the DIMMs that we tested. DDR400 performance of the Corsair was nothing special, with a number of other excellent TTCD memory modules outperforming Corsair at DDR400. It certainly appears in binning TCCD chips that the memory, which reaches the very top in memory speeds, is not the same TCCD that performs best at DDR400. However, the real performance penalty at DDR400 is really quite small.

Performance was similar on the Intel memory test bed, but we did not see the dominating performance on Intel that Corsair achieved on the AMD Athlon 64 test platform. On both platforms, below DDR466, there are other Samsung TCCD-based memories that will outperform Corsair. OCZ, G. Skill, and Geil in particular are clearly faster below 466. However, by the time that we reached 466 in the benchmarks, the Corsair TwinX1024-4400C25 was our new performance leader. The further that we went up the memory speed scale, the wider the lead for Corsair. This is mostly due to the aggressive timings possible with Corsair DDR550 at the higher memory speeds, since performance is otherwise the same as other TCCD that we have tested. For example, Corsair required 2-3-3 timings at DDR400, but those same DDR 2-3-3 timings still worked well at DDR500.

If you want the fastest DDR memory that you can buy for the AMD platform, then the Corsair is your choice, although the real performance increase over other top TCCD is very small. The Corsair reaches the highest levels of performance at the top, but with compromises in the DDR400 to 466 range compared to other top TCCD. We think that the compromises are justified, based on how very well the Corsair did at the top. We wondered if we might ever reach DDR600 in our AMD benchmarks, and Corsair blew past that with DDR610 at 1T and continued on to DDR638 at a 2T Command Rate. It even settled in with decent timings, 1T, and top performance at DDR590 - the fastest that we have seen.

For the fastest memory speeds possible, Corsair TwinX1024-4400C25 is your choice. For best performance at DDR400 to DDR466, almost any other Samsung TCCD module will do a little better. For DDR400 at 2-2-2 and top-end performance a bit shy of this extraordinary Corsair memory, you can choose Geil PC3200 Ultra X, Crucial PC3200 Ballistix, OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2, PQI 3200 Turbo, or G. Skill TCCD. Your choice depends on exactly where you want to go with memory on your computer.