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Memory - we never seem to have enough of the stuff. And as soon as we think we'll never need anymore, something comes along that claims we do. With Windows Vista poking its head around the corner to say hello and have a cup of tea, before it finishes your last bourbon biscuit, it subtly drops into the conversation that you're going to need a hell of a PC to get it to run smoothly.

I bet all the guys that bought DDR memory for their Socket A Athlon, have been particularly pleased, as it's probably lasted them through two or three upgrades. With that same thought, I decided to take a look at five different 2GB sets of DDR2 memory, rated at around the 1000MHz mark.

These should be good for any new AMD (AM2) or Intel Core 2 Duo system. At the moment, both Athlon 64/FX and Core 2 Duo use 800MHz memory. However, the Core 2 Extreme processors support 1066MHz memory, and this is where both platforms will naturally progress to. So it makes sense to get the fastest you can now, while in the mean time giving as much head room as possible for overclocking, should you be so inclined.

To test these modules, I used a Kentsfield Core 2 Extreme QX6700 on an Intel X975X motherboard. I also tested these modules on a Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, a beta Asus 680i “Striker” motherboard, and finally an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe coupled with an Athlon 64 FX62.

All my benchmark results are taken from the Intel X975X motherboard, but then when it came to overclocking, I very quickly discovered that my particular board wasn't in a position to do much. The Gigabyte board was my next bet, which I found couldn't overclock the memory any higher than 1120MHz. The Asus 680i motherboard was happy at 1200MHz and beyond, but was unfortunately particularly inconsistent.

Finally, I settled on using the M2N32-SLI Deluxe for overclocking testing. Unfortunately, in order to maintain the 800MHz memory divider, I had to use a 10x multiplier on our FX62. This meant that overclocking of the processor became a factor. This limited our highest possible memory frequency to 1200MHz.

For overclocking tests, I used 5-5-5-18 timings, a 2T command rate and 2.35V. For testing stability, I had a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD to hand, which includes MemTest86. This is great for testing memory module stability without putting your Operating System at risk. Once I knew it was stable, I ran our SpodeMark2D benchmark routine on it, to check for real world stability.

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