Editor’s note:This review is collaboration between two reviewers who are physically about ~7000km apart but throught the magic of the internet we present you with their findings on Team Group Memory in this roundup. Our US reviewer John Cook has tested 2 sets, while Berry, a freelance tester, put his hands on 4 sets. JNAV's text is in white, Berry's comments are in a different color

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Introduction

"Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule."(Charles Dickens, Great Expectations). While open to some interpretation, we bring forth this quote to give context to and also justify our existence here are Madshrimps, as well as illuminate the importance for the end users to gather as much data about prospective purchases from MANY sources in an effort to learn more about such products.

While gathering information for some is easy and almost trivial. For others the journey is more difficult, especially when attempting to find information on products that are relatively new, or a company is somewhat new to our community. With that in mind, let me introduce you to TeamGroup. Founded in 1990 in Silicon Valley, USA and later incorporated in Hong Kong in 1998; Team Group has recently begun an added push into the high performance PC sector and the overclocking community. I remember last fall when I reviewed G.Skill memory when that company was a relative unknown, and I’m getting similar good feelings from this company; that they are continuing a trend of Taiwanese manufacturers to bring forth excellent products at excellent prices.

I was contacted in fact by an old friend from G.Skill who now works with Team Group. He introduced me to a very nice lady from Team Group and set forth the process for me to review 2 kits of memory. The TXDR2048M500HC25DC(Infineon CE-6) and TXDR2048M500HC3DC(Micron -5d F) sets. Each set is rated at PC4000 meaning 250mhz or 500mhz effective frequency. Timings for each kit are relatively good considering the memory speed, but it’s not default settings/timings I’m really interested in.

Berry started looking about 3 months ago for a 2Gb kits to feed his need in applications such as PhotoShop, 3Dmax and others. After looking through the listing of available kits from many known brands he stumbled upon TeamGroup. He ordered two 2Gb kits:

PC4000 TXDR2048M500HC3DC 3-4-4-8 Samsung UCCC

PC3200 TXDR2048M400HC2DC 2-3-3-5 Infineon BE5

Unfortunately he ran into a compatibility issue with the Infineon based modules in his Shuttle SK83; after having spoken with TeamGroup’s customer support he decided to order 2 extra 2Gb kits which had different modules that those he had already purchased:

PC4000 TXDR2048M500HC3DC 3-3-3-8 Micron based

PC3200 TXDR2048M400HC25DC 2,5-4-4-8 Team labeled

So Berry ended up with 4 pairs of modules totalling 8Gb. Using his main workstation based on the DFI RDX200 CF-DR motherboard he was eager to find out the performance of his recent purchases.



To be honest, I and most of my friends are quite bored running things at default. While certainly we expect companies to build a quality kit of memory that meets specifications, we also expect a certain amount of “headroom” or overclockability. My fun in overclocking is more the journey and not always the destination, meaning I generally have more fun with the process than the result. Headroom however can be a very grey area, and expectations from one end user to another differ. Furthermore, I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend in various forums I frequent. There is almost a retaliation by end users against a company they purchase from when their product doesn’t meet their sometimes over-inflated expectations, whether it’s the products fault or not. What I really wish to impress upon the reader is that while I consider our reviews here at Madshrimps to be completely valid and legitimate, I do not wish the end user to base their expectations solely on this or any other websites review. Instead these articles are to be used as tools upon which to help base a purchasing decision, not as the sole and or total descriptor of what this and eventually your memory will perform like. In the end, each kit is different, and different platforms as well will produce different results. Remembering back to my first G.Skill article my Athlon 64 Winchester CPU limited my overclock, and often people are inclined to blame their ram and not their platforms when goals are not met.