Review From : Micro-Mart - United Kingdom Aug - 2004

This was a complete shock to me, as I was expecting Corsair to walk away with the gold on this occasion. For the aerage user who doesn't overclock it's very close to the Corsair, but what clinched it for me was the ability to run at over 500MHz. With products like this GeIL are going places!

Where the GeIL absolutely shined was in the overclocking test, where it went above 500 MHz without Generating memory errors.

GeIL is a new name to the UK memory market and standards for Golden Emperor International Ltd.  As you might have guessed they are a Taiwan-based operation, who market their products primarily in China and USA.

Of all the products here, this is the only one with a heat spreader on it.  I once asked the Corsair "RAM Guy" about these devices, and he said they didn't make a big difference to the potential speed - but they liked them because they protect the chips.  When I see him next I must therefore ask why they don't use them on their Value range.  So in terms of boh aesthetics and easier handing the GeIL Dimm is better than any other offering - but RAM's about more than good looks and common sense.

What the heat spreader covers are the GeIL 5ns chips, which are attached to a six layer ultra low noise PCB. The quoted quoted specification of these chips is CL2.5, which is the fastest for any of our "value" products. It's also offered as a Dual Channel Part - showing just what high quality it potentially is. The SPD for this piece is 2.5-6-3-3, but the test motherboard didn't recognise it and launched with a 2.5-8-4-4 setting. 

I manually altered the values in the BIOS to the correct ones and then tested. Where the GeIL absolutely shined was in the overclocking test, where it went above 500MHz without only generate 2.7V where the DIMM will handle 2.85V.

When you consider that this is more than 25% in excess of the baseline you can't help but be impressed. There's always a danger that my review sample is exceptional, but similar reports from other testers made me think it wasn't unique. 

This is the most expensive RAM by just a single penny, but as such I was expecting it to compare well with the likes of corsair and Crucial. It didn't, because this is better than what anyone else is offering - and most certainly worth the money they asking. 

What I liked most was the voltage range on offer, which can be exploited for more stability at higher speeds. While I can't guarantee that all GeIL chips are as good as this one, It does seem that they are aiming to grab a nice share of the market with this type of solution.