First I'll mention that the system which I used to test the various types of SD and DDR ram was chosen with the intention of replicating the tests easily, with the exact same configurations. The goal was to eliminate as many variables which may arise when using slightly different motherboards and other components as possible.

All the memory modules used in this review were manufactured by, and labeled as Micron and/or Crucial, and as such, we kept as many of the unknown variables negated due to the standard manufacturing processes of a single memory manufacturing source.

	1.) Crucial DDR RAM - PC1600
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	2.) Crucial DDR Memory - PC2100
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Rear

The motherboard chosen for this memory review was the Asus A7A266. The simple reason I chose this particular motherboard was attributed to the unique features built into the Ali Magik chipset. The Ali chipset manufactured by Acer Labs allows the motherboard to use either SDRAM or DDRAM. A great feature in my opinion considering not everyone may want to jump onto the DDR bandwagon right away, or for those who simply don't want to give up using their existing SDRAM modules just yet.

I must point out that I was not able to overclock the motherboard with much success, regardless of the type of voltage/cooling/tweaks/ and memory used. However, it appeared that the only memory able to run higher than its rated speed was the 256MB PC133 Micron SDRAM at a speed of 150MHz, so I decided to leave out that data.

One factor which might have hampered my tweaking success, could be the chipset that was used on this particular motherboard when I attempted the overclocking settings on this setup. I wonder if the Ali Magik DDR/SDRAM chipset might be a lesser performing choice, when compared to other DDR supported chipsets offered by AMD, VIA and SIS at the moment?

All data and benchmark scores were obtained using the factory default rated CPU speed.The test system used for this review consisted of the following:

Micron/Crucial SDRAM/DDRAM:

1.) 256MB PC133 CAS3 SDRAM
2.) 128MB PC133 CAS2 SDRAM
3.) 128MB PC1600 CAS2 DDRAM
4.) 128MB PC2100 CAS2.5 DDRAM

System Specs:

The first set of tests were run using the SiSoft Sandra 2001 Professional benchmark program.