Crucial’s always been known to have high quality ram. If you want a stable system then having good ram is one of the most important features. Well today I’m going to look at their PC3200 256MB DDR sticks: two of them to be exact. With my nForce2 board, we’re going to test the performance of the dual channel memory feature.

Crucial is a division of Micron and they are the only ones that are selling directly from the manufacturer. With over 95% of their business transactions occurring through the web, they help keep costs down and maintain a good efficient consumer friendly process. I’ve ordered a few sticks through their website and it was easy with my order arriving in a very timely manner. Crucial was very generous enough to send Gaming Nexus a stick of the 2 PC3200 256MB sticks.

When you order from Crucial, you are sent the ram in a nice slotted box with instructions and the memory in an anti-static bag. Crucial does a good job in protecting the ram in shipping so as to decrease the chance of receiving a damaged product. As you can see in the picture, the box is slotted to fit five sticks upright. They also offer second day shipping currently in the United States so that you get it fast. I’ve always had good experiences dealing with them and I’ve heard they have great customer service if you do have a problem.



The PC3200 stick is rated to work at 400MHz DDR. It’s singled sided meaning the RAM chips are only on one side of the stick. The PC3200 DIMMs are rated for a CAS Latency of 3, runs at a max rate of 200MHz, and uses 6 layers of PCB to ensure higher quality and stability. A limited lifetime warranty helps protect you from getting and using bad memory.

Here’s my test system:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
ABIT NF7-S motherboard
ATi All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro
120 GIG 7200 RPM Maxtor hard drive
Windows XP Service pack 1
Catalyst 3.2
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