Memory Manufacturers Could be Cheating 223
Mark Brown writes "Tom's Hardware is live-testing DDR2 memory products in order to determine whether memory manufacturers submit cherry-picked products for reviews. 'GeIL DDR2-667 that was claimed to be purchased performed worse than the review samples they got: 471 MHz for the review samples vs. 421 MHz for the retail memory.'"
Re:Well, duh! (Score:5, Informative)
Product reviews in general are a bit more difficult. Although the aforementioned Consumer Reports has a great thing going for them in purchasing products from stores, the thing is that they can AFFORD to do that. Most publications and websites can't, forcing them to rely on review samples. Car companies in particular are notorious for fine-tuning their review vehicles, which why Consumer Reports is highly respected for their year-end car accolades.
Re:Is this a surprise??? (Score:5, Informative)
The part of it that convinced me that they're right anyhow is the memory supply voltages. "Normal" on the cherry picked Gigabyte board was ~2.2V, normal on the storebought was ~1.83V (FVI 1.8V is the DDR2 spec supply voltage). You'll have to take my word for it, but THAT variation is huge. People who build computers do not tolerate voltage discrepancies like that, it's out of spec for the devices which usually allow 5% variation (1.71V-1.89V). You can verify this by going to Hynix/Micron/Infineon and pulling down a DDR2 component datasheet.
The headline is beyond wrong though, it's probably actually criminal. GeIL does not control the memory supply voltage (they make the DIMM), Gigabyte does (they make the mobo). GIGABYTE is cheating.
It's very easy to figure out if memory makers are cheating: take the heatsink off, look at the device part numbers and look them up. There's not a whole lot to tweak that doesn't involve a complete redesign of the DIMM. If they cheat it's almost always because they used a DDR2-400 device but branded their DIMM as DDR2-something_higher.
HARDOCP started doing something similar (Score:5, Informative)
What they are doing is having other people buying systems and then reviewing those systems. They will only review systems where they have an agreement with the manufacturer that the computer can be returned at the end of the review. The key is that the manufacturer never knows who is getting a system which may be subject to review.
It actually works well for both parties. Some manufacturers are proactive in the forums and even acted on complaints received, strengthing their processes.
I could be mistaken... (Score:3, Informative)
FUD, I'd say (Score:5, Informative)
I'm an engineer who designs memory modules. In most cases, our modules are overclockable, at least to some degree - some go faster than others. At the sort of speed that Tom's Hardware is running, I'm not really surprised that there's more than a 2 or 3% variation in performance, espeically if the chips on those modules came from different manufacturing lots. At the outer limits of memory speed performance, the tiniest changes in parasitic capacitance can be death to performance - and those values change from lot to lot, even from wafer to wafer.
When manufacturers specify that 2% to 3% tolerance, they're referring to the module's performance at its rated speed, and that makes sense. Plug two modules into a system and they will run in virtual lockstep - at their rated speed. There are a million analogies that I could use, but the bottom line is that there are assumptions and statements in Tom's article that just aren't right.
Maybe the module was cherry-picked and maybe it wasn't, but, if nothing else, a sample of two doesn't make for much of a study. After all, if the retail module had been DOA, a pedantic person could say that GeIL cherry-picked the evaluation samples and sends all the defective modules to retail.
-h-
Re:I don't really see the problem (Score:3, Informative)
Want a good review of your product? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously. Many years ago, I worked as a technician for a (now defunct) major audio equipment manufacturer. When a writer from "Stereo Review" or "Audio" magazine came to visit, we'd play with the equipment a little, my Engineering boss would hand him some specs, and they'd go out on the town (leaving me to work the rest of the day {grumble, grumble}). A few months later, we'd see those exact specs printed in the magazine, along with some well-placed ads. I never believe a review I read in a trade publication.
Consumer Reports lacks technical expertise in many areas, but at least their approach has some level of integrity.
Re:O'RLY (Score:3, Informative)
Geil sells over-specced memory, specially targeted at the overclocking crowd. They cost significantly more than "regular" memory because of that ability to be pushed way beyond normal speeds, so that you can run them in sync with the system bus and get the fullest bandwidth, rather than using a clock divider. It's a very unique market, one that doesn't matter to most people because the real-life performance gains are negligible, but overclocking is almost a sporting event for some people, and they want the absolute best. While Geil may not specifically guarantee overclocked speeds, it is the cornerstone of their reputation as a high-end memory vendor. For them to abuse the media in this fashion is absolutely misleading as the high speed is the main selling point.
If it were a stick of Kingston ValueRam that THG had overclocked, this would be a non-issue, it could be written off as a lucky batch as Kingston is not in the overclocking market. Geil is like a Maserati while Kingston is your everyday Toyota. If you paid the big bucks for a Maserati and found out it's slower than a Corolla you'd be upset too.
Re:Hardware Swap Idea (Score:3, Informative)