Verdict

I’ve heard the GeIL name every so often over the years but this is the first time I’ve had my hands on some of its memory. Mind you I suffered some confusion when I got a call from VIP Computers, the UK importers of GeIL, as I had always assumed that GeIL was pronounced ‘guile’ but no, it is ‘Geel’ the phonetic brother of ‘wheel’. For what it’s worth GeIL stands for Golden Emperor International Ltd.

The two modules of Evo One memory look rather funky thanks to the GeIL MTCD (Maximised Thermal Conduction & Dissipation) cooling system. The casing of the heatsink is made from two pieces of matt black aluminium that join at the top. It is attached to the memory chips with thermal glue and the outer surfaces of the heatsink are ridged to increase surface area.


So far, so conventional but then we come to something new. GeIL has clamped a heatpipe between the two halves of the heatsink which runs along the top of the circuit board. There’s a window carved out of the heatsink that is 25mm high and a little over 50mm long in which you can see the heatpipe and its 25 vertical copper fins. The thinking is that your CPU fan and any case fans inside your PC will move the air around and that will help to keep the memory cool. This is all well and good with two modules but the real benefit is likely to make its presence felt when you pack your motherboard with four modules of memory. GeIL illustrates the effect with a drawing that it calls the Wind Tunnel effect as air can flow through the middle of all four modules so the central pair doesn’t get cremated.

It sounds plausible enough but we’ll never know whether the theory works in practice as the review sample we have is a pair of 2GB modules in a 4GB kit. We touched on the business of running Windows with 4GB of memory when we reviewed a 4GB Corsair CM2X4096-6400C5 DDR2 kit.


We were looking at the claim that some games are not only limited by your CPU and graphics card but also by the amount of memory that you have installed in your PC. This is problematic because the only way to use more than 3GB of memory is to move from a 32-bit Operating System to 64-bit so the upgrade is considerably more complicated than merely plugging in more memory. The argument for the move to 64-bit Vista on the desktop was, as far as we were concerned, unconvincing. If you’re switching from XP to Vista then you might as well go down the 64-bit route but if you already use 32-bit Vista you won’t be making the 64-bit switch for a year or two.

Unfortunately I didn’t do the usual performance testing on the 4GB Corsair because I was looking at the effect of the amount of memory rather than its speed, and that has turned out to be rather short sighted. Here I am with 4GB of GeIL memory and I can’t compare its raw performance to the 4GB of Corsair so let’s look at the next best thing which is 2GB of relatively slow Crucial Ballistix.

When the Crucial was reviewed it cost £108 but it has since fallen in price to £82 which is a fair bit cheaper than the 4GB GeIL but, of course, it’s half the capacity. That said, the GeIL memory is rated for a maximum speed of 800MHz while the Crucial can hit the next level of 1,066MHz.

We’re used to the idea that you need to increase the amount of power you feed to your memory if you want to hit speeds above 800MHz but GeIL takes a slightly different approach. If you use the standard 1.8V setting you will be restricted to latency settings of 5-5-5-15 but if you increase the voltage to 1.9V-2.0V you can lower the timings to 4-4-4-12. During our tested we persuaded the GeIL to run as high as 907MHz on an Abit P35 Pro motherboard once we started to overclock but our test results show that if anything the reduced latency reduced performance.


With the front side bus raised to the maximum stable figure of 360MHz (1,440MHz effective) and our Q6600 processor running at 3.24GHz we got a useful increase in performance. That was entirely thanks to the raised processor speed and not because of the memory. This feeling was confirmed by switching to the 2GB of Crucial on its slower latency timings of 5-5-5-15 yet SiSoft Sandra reported latencies that were significantly better.

As you would expect, when we raised the speed of the Crucial to the max the performance was slightly better than the GeIL but that’s something of an unfair comparison.

The GeIL Evo One memory is more akin to a Shetland pony than a racehorse but it’s perfectly capable of supporting any Core 2 processor on the market. If you have a 266MHz/1,066MHz Kentsfield you’ll be able to overclock to your heart’s content and will probably find that an overclocked 333MHz/1,333MHz works well enough on a 1:1 memory multiplier.

We didn’t expect a great amount from the MTCD cooling system as we were only using two modules of memory on an open test system but we had a surprise in store. The two modules of Crucial were distinctly toasty at 42 degrees while the GeIL memory was significantly cooler at 35 degrees. So, even if performance isn’t outstanding, these GeIL modules are worth considering for their cooling solution alone.

”’Verdict”’

You won’t buy the GeIL Evo One memory for its performance however it offers fair value for money if you have a hankering for 64-bit Vista and the cooling system is incredibly effective.

”’System Setup:”’

*Abit IP35 Pro BIOS 14

*Intel Core 2 Q6600 2.40GHz 1066MHz FSB

*4GB GeIL Evo One

*2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500

*MSI NX8800GT

*Windows Vista Ultimate Edition 64-bit

”’GeIL Evo One”’

*816MHz 5-5-5-18 2T Auto, Q6600 at 2.45GHz 9x272MHz, Default voltages

*907MHz 4-4-4-12 1T Manual, Q6600 at 2.45GHz 9x272MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 1.95V, MCH 1.41V

*864MHz 4-4-4-12 2T Manual, Q6600 at 3.24GHz 9x360MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 1.95V, MCH 1.41V

”’2GB Crucial Ballistix”’

*816MHz 5-5-5-15 Auto, Q6600 at 2.45GHz 9x272MHz, Default voltages

*864MHz 5-5-5-15 Auto, Q6600 at 3.24GHz 9x360MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 2.20V, MCH 1.41V

*1,080MHz 5-5-5-15 Auto, Q6600 at 3.24GHz 9x360MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 2.20V, MCH 1.41V

”’System Setup:”’

*Abit IP35 Pro BIOS 14

*Intel Core 2 Q6600 2.40GHz 1066MHz FSB

*4GB GeIL Evo One

*2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500

*MSI NX8800GT

*Windows Vista Ultimate Edition 64-bit

”’GeIL Evo One”’

*816MHz 5-5-5-18 2T Auto, Q6600 at 2.45GHz 9x272MHz, Default voltages

*907MHz 4-4-4-12 1T Manual, Q6600 at 2.45GHz 9x272MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 1.95V, MCH 1.41V

*864MHz 4-4-4-12 2T Manual, Q6600 at 3.24GHz 9x360MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 1.95V, MCH 1.41V

”’2GB Crucial Ballistix”’

*816MHz 5-5-5-15 Auto, Q6600 at 2.45GHz 9x272MHz, Default voltages

*864MHz 5-5-5-15 Auto, Q6600 at 3.24GHz 9x360MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 2.20V, MCH 1.41V

*1,080MHz 5-5-5-15 Auto, Q6600 at 3.24GHz 9x360MHz, CPU 1.30V, RAM 2.20V, MCH 1.41V

Trusted Score