April 1999 SDRAM Comparison

1 - Third Party PCB
2 - Samsung (SEC) Made PCB

The long overdue addition of the chip id numbers to the review should help straighten out some confusion, especially among the different types of Samsung modules. First of all, when purchasing Samsung based SDRAM, there are two different types featured in this review, the KM48S8030BT-GH and the KM48S8030CT-GH. According to Samsung's part numbers, the "B" in the first part number denotes a component revision number of 3, while the "C" in the second part number denotes a later, 4th revision of the chips. The Rev. 3 chips ("B") were found on all modules that were not Samsung originals, meaning they weren't originally manufactured by Samsung. The Rev. 4 chips, on the other hand, were only seen on the Samsung original modules, possibly contributing to the increased stability the SEC Originals offered over the competing Samsung based products.

The beta Samsung PC133 modules were a tad more stable than the older SEC originals at the 133MHz FSB frequency, unfortunately they did not remain crashless as the Corsair-Micron PC133 samples did during the tests. The stability of the modules can definitely be expected to improve as they grow closer to their final release date, the thing to remember here is that the force driving the need for PC133 SDRAM is not Intel, in fact, Intel won't be abandoning PC100 for around 6 more months, instead, VIA will attempt to convince the industry that the move to PC133 now, is a wise one. Can VIA accomplish the task? For their sake, we'd like to hope so, however until then, the sweet spot for any SDRAM purchase is still the 124MHz mark. If you can run at 124MHz, you should be fine with your current setup, there's no need to lose sleep over not having true PC133 SDRAM just yet.