So what's the real story on DDR2? We've all seen how DDR trounces it again and again in the performance field, but at the same time we believe that with the much higher speeds of DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 in our near future that it will be able to soar above the rest. Some of that has now been put to the test, with GeIL's DDR2-1000 (PC2-8000 rating) being inspected. To date, no motherboard officially supports RAM at that speeds, with the latest revision of Intel's 975 chipsets topping off at 800. GeIL's kit is rated to operate at a full 500MHz with timings of 5-5-5-15. The modules were tested on a 955 based motherboard, which is the most common enthusiast 9x5 chipset in the market currently.
The RAM ended up topping out at DDR2-960, most likely a limitation of the chipset which had to be highly overclocked to reach that speed to begin with. Sadly, the review did not have any comparisons to DDR, which would put things in a different light. With a vast increase in clockspeed, though, came a substantial increase in performance. With modules already being rated as high as 1000 and 1066MHz, DDR2's time to shine may be just around the corner