Corsair Twinx4000 DDR500 Dual Channel Memory Review

When it comes to high performance memory the enthusiast has typically been limited to 512Meg sticks of DDR. It was quite rare to find modules any larger than this and if you did they were standard JEDEC DDR400 without any extended frequency characteristics or Low Latency timings.

Corsair has changed that with their latest weapon in memory technology, TwinX2048 4000 DDR500 memory. You can consider these a weapon not because of their throwing characteristics or tendency to spontaneously combust in to a cloud of radioactive gas* but simply because they contain twice the ram!

It is a little known fact that the more memory you have the faster and more efficient your system will run. Many applications, games, and even operating systems have minimum system requirements that typically list RAM requirements. As a general rule if you double the suggested amount of RAM you will get roughly the recommended amount of memory required, halve that and add it to the previous total and you have the amount you really need for smooth operation. The trouble is that kind of memory is not cheap and the cheaper stuff has terrible performance characteristics that will limit overclocks and overall performance.

The TwinX modules featured in this review are in the basic configuration and feature aluminum heat spreaders. For those looking to add a little bling to their box the TwinX4000 modules come with silver heatspreaders and in ProSeries form with activity LEDs across the top. The photo on the right shows a regular and ProSeries module for size comparison.

One item we especially like on every Corsair module is the identification tag. This sticker tells us the name of the memory module, memory id number (which is identical on TwinX modules so you can pair them up again), memory size, and most importantly memory timings. Just don't remove the sticker if you want any chance to use the lifetime warranty.

In this review we will be looking at 2 aspects of the new TwinX2048-4000 memory, the first will be the basic fundamental theory that more memory is always better even if the smaller memory has better timings. The second aspect will look at performance gains due to increased memory frequency.

Now on to the benchmarks

* There is no proof that exploding memory will produce radioactive gas, nor if Corsair memory will explode at all.