Sodding Day (Count = 2431)

Today's been a sodding day.

My boss gave me the go ahead to hand him some video files by that evening but the other members weren't aware of it and gave me black faces.

Then I left my thumbdrive in school. And it's not due to be open till wednesday...

And I've got a bunch of my work there...

Then i watched Lost which got me pretty pissed at Locke.. This episode really fucking affected me real bad.. i was fucking pissed with the fact that Locke actually beat up Charlie, regardless of what Charlie did, cuz Charlie is what we can consider a bottom feeder.

For me, someone higher up the rank should never ever force his "power's" on a lower.

Basically, Charlie is a good guy. But the characters in the show decide to judge him based on what he does at face value.

Somehow, this episode really really got to me...

Everyone has a breaking point

Keying sucks..

I find, like everyone else. We're all enthusiastic about video production. But the more we do it, the more "sucky" it becomes. Even someone like me who's done tons of videos prior to my Poly life, finds it to be continually more and more sucky...

On my way to school on the train, some fuckwits decided that playing some horrendous Chinese music loudly was very fitting. I was half asleep when those asswipes decided to do that. Just as I was reaching my stop, I got up to alight. But a number of other passengers thought i was going to tell those fuckers off. lol.. I gave the fucker a cold hard stare then alighted.

Who were those fuckwits? A chinese couple. The guy probably 15-17 and a young teenage typical Chinese girl.

Postly Links
[Tech News - DDOS] - Million Dollar Homepage DDOSed

Kids are smart

I paid for our Newspaper subscription while my parents were not at home so I asked my mom for money. Petty claims if you will.

Then my sister said, "Don't ask Mummy for money. Ask Daddy. You can get more money."
Wahahaha.. very smart sia she... lol...


Anywayz,
Went fishing with Nick and Malau to chermin and ray alley...

Malau actually asked me if I wanted to go when I was in school. Since my lecturer was apparently absent, I said I didn't mind. But he wasn't that keen on going so in the end I stayed on, waiting for the lecturer, who eventually did come. lol.

After that though, he called me up again and said he was fishing there already and if I wanted to go. After some thought, I said OK.

Pix below.. :D



Postly Links
[Microsoft - Windows BlackComb Vienna] - BlackComb now is Vienna
I've personally known about BlackComb for a long while now, if I'm not wrong, about 6 years back.
[Intel - Processors] - Pentium, no more.

Postly Quotes
[USAA - Urban Legends]
While interviewing an anonymous US Special Forces soldier on his sniper skills, a Reuters News agent asked the soldier what he felt when shooting members of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The soldier shrugged and replied, 'Recoil.'"

MMPJ Presentation Day.

Today Clems, Weili, YG, Jinghao and I did our MMPJ FinalYearProject Proposal Presentation.

I think we did pretty well...

It really was like a proffesional presentation. Well, a professional, casual presentation.

First, Clemens started off by asking the audience a question. Then, the rest of us handed out name cards while clemens distributed the 2 sample T-Shirts that he had brought along.

Then, at the end, we all stood together and cheered off our slogan.

Haha....

During Q & A, Jackson asked a question that we had asked him to ask us.. lol..
Jackson: "Do you have a working prototype that you can show us."
LOL!!
Me: "Why yes indeed Jackson. Hold on one moment."

Lol..

We, as a group had decided that my demonstration would not be able to to safely fit in to the time allocated for the actual presentation we had.

We actually were 1.5 minutes short in practice runs of our allocated time.

It was a good thing though because during the real presentation, we very nearly overshot the time allocated.

Now I'm going off to sleep. I woke up way to early today to prepare for this. lol.

Cheers.

What a day...

Mr Ho Chee Meng took me out for lunch the other day. We were supposed to discuss the issue that I had snailMailed him about. Apparently, the entire conversation was complete before we even reached the food centre.

He sent me back to school after that where I played CS throughout the whole lesson. Towards the end though, I kept having to go to the toilet. Diarhoeaa style. I had to go do number 2 about every five minutes

Anywayz, I made one last stop before I left school for the MRT(Mass Rapid Transit [Train]). By the time I reached the Station, I needed to go again but because the train was going to be there very soon, I decided to hold it in. BIG MISTAKE!!!

Throughout the entire 1 hour train ride I ended up getting many "penetration" attempts and at about the 15 minute mark. I was sitting, bent over with my forefingers at my temples.

When I finally reached my stop, I immediately went to the toilets nearby and proceeded to "get it all out". Unfortunately, just when I tot I was done, more started to come out. About 20 minutes had passed with me standing then squatting then standing again over the bowl(squatting type).

A number of times while standing up I felt like passing out but I focused my mind and managed to maintain consciousness.

After giving up on ever releasing everything, I decided to hold in anything else that was about to come out and head straight for the doctors'. I had by now SMSed my mom to get a cab and wait for me at a nearby road. As I was washing my hands at the sink, I felt the need to throw up.

Now, I'm the kind of person that can hold back his vomit at will. But I reasoned that if I was feeling this bad, maybe throwing up was a good thing.

The throwing up in itself was a good thing. But my enthusiasm probably was a bad thing. I ended up throwing up 5-6 times where one of them lasted for about 5 seconds straight. I could hardly breathe. The last or second last one also had some blood in it.

After composing myself, I walked to the main road where my mom was supposed to be waiting for me but because she wasn't, I asked a nice man who was just getting on to the taxi if I could tumpang (hitch a ride with) him to a nearby clinic(also near my house). He was kind enough to say OK.

I called my mom while on the way and she said she hadn't noticed the sms but would meet me at the clinic. By now I was in great pain and even more discomfort.

It turned out that the clinic wasn't due to be opened for another half hour. I had three options.
1) Wait for it to open
2) Go to another nearby clinic without my medical records
3) A & E at a nearby hospital

Number 3 was scratched out because my previous experience there ended up with me waiting over an hour with a splitting headache for medical attention. And besides, many others also mentioned that that hospital sucked.

Being the typical lazy Singaporean that I was, number 2 also was scratched out.

I ended up waiting for the clinic to open but not before making a quick pitstop to my home to drop more liquid bombs.

When I reached the doctor's office, it turned out I was fifth in line. After making another pitstop, this time to the toilet in the doctor's office, and some presuasion, I was promoted to patient number 1.

The doctor diagnosed me with The Gastric Flu, but hell, it felt like something much worse. I felt weak all over, I had to frequently shit, had a headache, felt dizzy.

The doc gave me a jab to stop the vomitting and some pills to stop the diarhoeaa..

After much discomfort and slowly disintegrating pain, I'm much much better now thanks to God and modern medicine.

Postly Links
[Videos - Fishing] - Fish galore (No rod needed)

Vin's Kelong Fishing

I woke up at like 4 in the morning after sleeping at just about midnight.

Glen and Gary both couldn't come because they were sick and that meant that dead prawns was no longer an option. So we ended up spending $62 per person for the entire trip. Ouch.

The beginning part of the trip was very very bad. Either Ah Sengs or absolutely no bites.

The forecasted rain also never did come although we did see it over mainland Singapore.

Me and Nigel's Grandpa were the only ones who stayed up the entire trip i.e. from the time we reached the spot to the time we left which was at about 8am the next day.

The next day was rather good though in terms of fishing albeit we only had about an hour of that. I caught a nice Red Snapper on circle hooks while Dennis caught a Kaci about 5 minutes before we were to leave, after he proclaimed it as his "last burst". lol. Talk about luck.


Day after tomorrow(Day 1):
Day 1:
The Kelong (Day 1):
Doomsday (Day 1):
My Red Snapper (Day 2):
Ice luring (Day 2):
Dennis and his Really-Last-Minute Kaci (Day 2):
Morning Sky (Day 2):
KimKor Master (Day 2):

Being a good Singaporean..

Being a good Singaporean is:
Helping your foreign tourists find their way around Singapore
(A lady was looking a for block number 244. She was standing under it for long while. hehe)

Save fossil fuels and use/share natural gas
(Farted in train.. si beh[bloody, fucking, <insert cuss word here>] smelly.)

Doing well in your studies
(96% for EEL(an Electronics Elective) test. Attended only 2 lectures and 1 practical as at this mid semester test.)

Creating products that excite the intelligent mind
Autostart: false | tip: click play and wait
Excellence in shipbuilding(achorage/shipwright?)
Autostart: false | tip: click play and wait

Postly Links
[Comments - Holding true] - Comments made in 1955 hold true
[Urban Legends - Buckhannon] - Mining Heroism
[Science - Astronomy] - Milky Way Warp explained

Unique Products
[Books and Reading] - That Thumbthing

Unique Ads
[Pixel Ads] - The Million Dollar Homepage (The dude sells Pixels)

Ban ban ban

http://miyagi.sg/wp-trackback.php?p=251

I wanted to comment on this but some other guy summed it up pretty well for me in Mr Miyagi's blog.

Tucker Chang on Jan 5th, 2006 at 2:49 am

Ban Foaming
Not again. Whenever there is something wrong with something, there is a call to ban that something!
Singaporeans need to grow up. If the govt heed every petition, soon, what’s left of the souls of Singapore?
Resolution for 2006 - Stop using the word BAN

Although, I do empathise with those victims, banning is a childish and short-sighted counter-measure. Even worse still, some of them want to ban the product's sale. For Pete's sake, c'mon. Get real people.

Postly Links
[Life - Crazy Ironies] - Burning mouse sets fire to House
[Criminals - Asswipes] - Armed woman sues officers for shooting at her
[Military - Funny] - Supersonic flyby over Afghanistan

Interesting Blogs
[USA - Military] - Patriot Voices

Postly Bash Quotes
The general rule on about people on IRC seems to be "Attractive, single, mentally stable: choose two"

HDB Engrish

Was waiting for the lift to my apartment just now when I came across this Ad.

I decided to correct a little English in that Ad esp since it was a tuition Ad for, among other subjects, English. lol

Hehe.. that part I added in is circled in Red.


I just didn't feel obliged.. lol....

Shutter - The Movie

Short Talk: Firefox 1.5 is out.

Whoa! Dudes and dudettes!!! The storyline for Shutter is SWEET!!!!!

2 Thumbs up for the twist at the end. Plus a toe, and then the other. And maybe I'll just throw in a hand for good measure.

About a quarter into the show and about a quarter before it ends, the acting by the "ghost" can be a bit off sometimes. But........

The ending is fucking SWEET!!!!

Don't watch the show up till the ending unless you have a wall against your back, and then again for some, not even then. lol...

The release I had had no probems with the subs when viewing it on the computer. But when burning to DVD, had some really bad problems and also couldn't mux the subs and the main video stream together. Took me a while but I've finally re-encoded the whole damn thing with no errors and with full English Subtitles and is in an XVid AVI format.

Info: Shutter is a Thai horror movie. As always, Asian horror flicks are always the best... :D

In other news.

Firefox Plugin:
Firefox 1.5 is out. In lieu of that, here are some interesting Firefox Plugins...
[Browser Plugins - Firefox] - Performancing Plugin. Allows you to blog anything that you can see in the browser. Just right click and click Blog This.
[Browser Plugins - Firefox] - FlashGot. Allows you to interface any Download Manager with Firefox. With the exception of DAP with requires you to get a special license from them.

Interesting Links:
[Facts - Holy Crap! It's real?] - Homer simpson makes men of decade list

Bash quotes:
Here are some interesting quotes from Bash.

<tom_0369> man <tom_0369> im never moving to seatle washington <tom_0369> i flew over it and it was raining and gray as fuck <tom_0369> it was depressing <sammich> when was this? <tom_0369> flight simluator 2004

<tumult> well that was like the coolest class period i've ever had <lasombra> tumult ? <tumult> this kid asks me for a dollar so he can get something from a vending machine <tumult> i tell him i don't have one (truth) <tumult> he says bullshit <tumult> i tell him to fuck off <tumult> he stands up and punches me in the face three times <tumult> sits back down <tumult> teacher doesn't notice/care <tumult> so blood is pouring out onto my desk <tumult> from my lip <tumult> i turn to the girl next to me and say <tumult> "hey, can i use one of the tissues jammed into your bra?" <zyko^> what did she do? <tumult> punched me in the face

<Graeme> yeah, don't be nasty. my grandad died in a concentration camp......! <Graeme> he fell out a guard tower. broke his neck

#1 pickup line of all time: "Hey, does this rag smell like chloroform to you?

CR: Nick's Chermin and StingRay Alley

Note: Ripped from FK.com

No Long story or creatively edited pix here(well, at least not so much).
Tired la. haha

Me n Propunk were supposed to be fishing at ECP. Shortly after confirming, Nick called me and said if wanna go his spot, dubbed "Nick's Chermin & StingRay Alley". He had caught a 1kg+ Leopard Ray. So with that we decided to go there instead. My bro ended up joining me, his fourth fishing trip. (All previous trips he got first catch).

When we reached there, some other guys had caught an est 1kg Chermin.

At about 12, Nick caught a nice sized flathead.

Malau joined us at about 1o'clock. And that's when the stingray's started biting. Nick and I had double hookups with... 200gram stingrays... haha. About a while later I got another one.

At about 5.30pm, my bro was reeling in with his rod when he felt like it was sangkut, so he put it down and came to see what I was doing. When i saw that his line was slack I told him maybe got fish liao. But then he said it was because he had reeled it in halfway cuz it was sangkut. So I told him to go try again. He said still cannot move so I took the rod and gave it a hard tug. About a half a metre of line suddenly came out.

And I was like, "KNN Got Fish!!!!". So I passed the rod back to him. But he was reeling in the bugger the wrong way but when i tried to tell him, my words came out in incoherent bursts! haha.. I was stunned. That's when ProPunk took over and he asked me, are your rigs reliable?

I said yes although I was worried about the hooks.

The ray was landed in about 5 minutes. (Nearby oni)

My bro was friggin happy man.. haha...

The bugger had swollowed the circle hook until it was very deep.

Hook: Mustad Light Gauge Circle Hook from Gotham event... hehe...


Nick's catch:


My bro's Stingray:


My bro and his Stingray:


Mustad Light Gauge Circle Hook:

An old spot revisited.

Short talk: Microsoft are realeasing a bug fix for their WMF Vulnerability.

Ubin Night Fishing

Bottomline: Catfish and some Gelama(Croakers) were all that I caught

I had a plan; Ice and I were supposed to follow Nick for netcasting from about 5 pm to about 6 where we would then go and have our dinner after which we were to take the boat to Pulau Ubin.

I had also anticipated that it would begin to rain only after we had left the netcasting place.

So I didn't bring my coat.

KNN!!!! Every single time I don't bring my coat it will rain and everytime I DO bring my coat it won't. Regardless of the the weather reports and what they say. Every single time.

I was fucking drenched.

Anywayz, Nick was kind enuf to give us some of his catch to use as bait our trip later.

For some reason or other, I ended up spending $70 fucking Singapore dollars on God knows what. I was waiting at the bumboat jetty with Ice and I was like checking my wallet [cuz the cost of a bumboat is usually shared by 12 ppl. So I wanted to check if I had enuf money as there were only two of us so that meant a cost of $24 dollars to be shared between us both. Thankfully though, the boat uncle and auntie gave us a discount of $12]. Then I was like, "Shit! Where did all my money go?".

Oh well... Broke.. Again...

I'm looking for a part time job... Anyone got lobang please call me. Thanks..

When we reached the main jetty, I saw this "weathered" Malay man sitting on the benched along the jetty. I said hello and asked if he was waiting for the boat.

"Oh.. no.. I sleep here."

I was like.. wtf!!! Although I smiled politely all the way.

He started talking to us about how his house was a little way from here but there were mosquitoes. He also mentioned that his wife was inside. OMG!! lol..

Then he started talking about how the Singapore Government are assholes who take so much money for themselves. Then he praised them for bringing in foreign talent because that was simply so that other countries would not start a war with us claiming that they had original rights to the land.

Speaking of which, he then started an interesting conversation on who really found Singapore first. Apparently, the dinosaurs and monkeys were the first to discover Singapore and hence are the true owners of the land. All this happened about 400 years ago.

Which then brought him on to the topic of religion. Where he commented on how irritating it was when Christians wanted to evangelise. Then he went on about how we both originally served the same God. Except that when Jesus came, we believe that he is God whereas they simply believe that he is a prohphet.

Then he began talking about how one of these days(within the next three years apparently), he and some kaki(ca/key - Singapore slang for good friends), would take back Singapore by force from any aggresors including the Singapore Gahmen(Singapore slang for - Government).

I'll admit he did have a point in most of what he was saying but for Pete's sake, he was living in in a tent out on an old jetty. His wife was alone at home in their apparently mosquito infested house. He doesn't have a steady job. When the good fish season is in, he guides ppl to good spots. He manages boat trips for people. And when the season is out, he works for kelongs for about $70 a day.

I guess it's just me then if I say that I appreciate and enjoy the little conveniences that we have in Singapore like oh, say, running clean water, 24 hrs supermarkets, one of the best public transport systems in the world and a country with a very low number of homeless citizens(not as low as advertised but still low).

I'll admit it's a bit hard to cope with but if you can make it, then you really can make it. If you get what I mean.

uh-oh. I digressed again... :P

Anywayz, the highlights of this trip were that Ice bot this super light rod that let him have a good fight with, get this, Gelamas... wahahaha...

We ended up getting a number of catfish and one big flower crab(The meat is sweeter than mud crabs but is less. way less.). And my rod had one huge take which amounted to nothing even though I was using circle hooks(Don't need to stike. Auto hookup when the fish bites).

Took some pictures though.

fusionstream.flickr

fusionforest.flickr

My next trip will hopefully include some videos because it's going to be a KELONG TRIP!!! Woohoo!!! haha... :D

Today

I'm so fucking happy... :D:D

I think I aced a test on a subject that I only went for two lessons. Ok.. I gotta rephrase that but... who cares...

I'm going fishing tonite too... And if there are no fish, I'm gonna be luring the next day.. Non stop... Yet another 48 hour marathon.. woohoo.... :D:D

FusionStream, out.

Lying is the most fun a girl can have without having to take off her clothes

Short talk: Fixed a bug in the media player cuz it doesn't remember the startMode when you restart the browser.

I heard splashes the other night and I hoped that it wasn't yet another aquarium cracking.

Instead, in turned out to be my catfish hunting my other fish. Those evil pelagics that were about the size of the following <;)))>--> when they were tiny babies about a month ago were actively hunting my other fish.

EDIT: File size reduced to 3Mb | Autostart: false | Tested on: Firefox, WMP, MSIE.

Note: Press the play button and wait a while.

I saw a pic of the same species of catfish somewhere on fishingkaki.com. It scared the shit outta me that my catfish would grow to that big. And all because I wanted to see how big the feeder fish could grow up to.

Fuck.

And here i tot catfish were scavengers or at least, not hunters.

I caught one eating a small fish and I saw that it's belly was so big. So i took it out of the tank and gently stroked it's stomach till the half eaten fish came out.

Fucking disgusting, man...

---

Just came back from Nick's block after he asked me to meet him and see and take photos of his catch today.

Pix from that within two posts from now.

Postly Links
[Science - Experimental] - SuperMagnets that can crush your bones
[Computers - Overclocking] - Overclocking tutorial
[Science - AstroPhysics] - Are dark matter and black holes the same
Space has always fascinated me. Not enuf for my to risk frying my brain and actually going to study that stuff though.. haha. But just enuf for me to pour over every "layman's" Space related article out there. Like the above. lol

Blogs of interest
[Canada - Faith/Life] - http://merecatholics.blogspot.com/ (Interesting blog with very real posts)
[Singapore - Beng] - Rockson (I think this is a pseudo blog. It's almost like talkingcock.com And his profile shows no blogs. Meaning he wants to shield ppl who see his pseudo blog from seeing his "real" blog and vice versa)

5 Weird Things About Meself

Some Christians just came to my house today and wanted to talk about the Bible.. lol... They looked like friendly chaps(he had his family with him). Told him I was Christians as well and he just went off after saying thank you. I figure he didn't believe me. Esp since the first thing he asked me was if I was Malay.. lol.. Too much fishing i guess...

The best parts were, I wasn't wearing any shorts (and there was some reflective glass behind me), I hadn't brushed my teeth yet, and my hair looked like I had been just zapped by, erm, a zapper.

Anywayz, I only know 3+2 Malay Muslim converts to Catholicism.

One was my dad's old friends'(2) and their kids(2). And the other was some guy who spoke at mass in one of Singapore's most active charismatic church who said he saw Jesus when on the operating table.

---

Oh well.. back to the game thing.. haha

I've been tagged for meme. by Kalanna, a warrior woman as you can see in her profile.

1) Whenever I talk to a cute or pretty girl I stutter and look to the floor. And I occasionally walk funny. (When i try to raise my head it somehow get's "stuck" halfway up and guess where that leaves me looking. Bad things happen.)

2) I occasionally fish in my aquarium. (But only for those cheap and fugly fish)

3) I almost forgot how to walk after playing computer games almost everyday for 5 months after I had just finished my 'O' Levels... My head also began twitching all by itself when I wasn't moving... I also lost all my skill in soccer.

4) I talk and laugh to myself when sitting in front of the computer. I also fart.

5) I'm a late teen with 4 aquariums, 3 computers(one more on the way), 5 hardrives and 2 cd/DVD writers in one of 'em, 14 fishing rods, 3 guitars, a drum set, 50 boxes of products that i "archive" , BUT ONLY ONE STINKING PAIR OF SHOES!!!

The part about the stinking shoes was a metaphor of course... :P

My Victims: Seng Chong, Sunshin3, Shane, Shu Hui.
(no conspiracy here what with all the names starting with S)



Postly Links
[3D/CGI/Anim - Realism] - link @ joystiq.com
Is that CGI or what? I thought one or two places looked a bit plastic but then I realised the head was panned slightly away from the "camera". That's really hard to do and it gives one the impression that it's real.

So at the end of it all, I have no idea if it's real or not.
[Computers - WebDesign] - Some tips you'll find very useful
[Life(Singapore) - Hospital] - OUCH!!!!! Singapore guy got attacked

Interesting Blogs
[Singapore - Personal] - Orangeous
[Singapore - Personal] - Balderdash

About DDR2 (An old post)

THIS POST WAS SUPOSED TO BE PUBLISHED ON APRIL 5th 2005.
For some reason it wasn't so I'm posting it now...

DDR vs. DDR2 - What it means to you.

Manufacturer: Corsair

Supplied by: Corsair

by Brian Tiller (8/26/2004)



Introduction

Now that DDR2 is out, motherboard manufacturers have gotten geared up for it's appearance. Is now the time to go for the gusto and upgrade? Hopefully this article will help to shed some light on that question as we pit the new against the old.





Now, I'm not saying that the days of DDR are over, but we've pretty much seen the limits of what DDR is capable of. DDR2 is the next logical progression for memory standards and speeds. DDR2 incorporates several new designs and specifications which play a part in it's increased speed.


On-Die Termination
On-Die Termination is what it sounds like. With DDR, excess signal noise was eliminated by transistors built into the motherboard, but DDR2 has the terminating transistors built into each memory chip.


Posted CAS and Additive Latency
These two, prevent data collisions within the memory while still able to transfer more read/write instructions per clock cycle.


Off Chip Driver Calibration
Increases signal integrity


Prefetch
DDR uses a 2-bit prefetch while DDR2 now uses a 4-bit prefetch.


Package
No, not the cardboard and plastic that the memory comes shipped in, but the packaging of the memory chips themselves. Using a Fine Ball Grid Array (FBGA), DDR2 can be made smaller than DDR which uses Thin Small Outline Package (TSOP).

Below is a small chart, courtesy of Corsair, which outlines the major differences of the two types of memory.

	DDR	DDR2
Data Bus	64 bits	64bits
Data Rate	200/266/333/400 Mbps	400/533/667 Mbps
Bus Frequency	100/133/166/200 MHz	200/266/333 MHz
DRAM Frequency	100/133/166/200 MHz	100/133/166 MHz
Package Type	TSOP-II	FBGA
Densities	256MB 512MB 1GB	256MB 512MB 1GB
Voltage	2.5V	1.8V
Prefetch Size	2 bits	4 bits
Burst Length	2/4/8	4/8
CAS Latency	1.5, 2, 2.5	3+, 4, 5
Write Latency	1T	Read Latency -1

From this chart you can tell that DDR2 effectively picks up where DDR1 leaves off. It's data rate begins at 400 and scales upward to 667 currently. Another thing to take notice of are the latencies; they are double those of DDR. Apparently, they are sacrificed for the higher speed, and it should be interesting to see what kind of a trade off it is. Voltage requirements for DDR2 are greatly reduced from that of DDR. Down to 1.8 volts; this translates into a lot less power needed to read and write for the memory.


Thanks to our friends at Corsair, we are going to pit some top rated DDR and DDR2 modules up against one another and let you decide how things fare in the upgrade decision. For DDR, we have our TwinX PC3200XL modules which will be going against the new DDR2 PC5400 units.




As you can tell from the labels, what DDR2 makes up for in speed, it loses in latency timings.

We first thought of a head to head comparison for these two standards when we saw that Gigabyte had come out with a motherboard supporting both DDR and DDR2 which would make the testing as fair as possible. Using the same motherboard and chipset would prevent any outside factors from influencing the test results.

Test Setup

• Gigagbyte GA-8I915P-Duo motherboard 915 chipset


• Intel LGA 775 2.8GHz Prescott CPU


• Hitachi 80GB SATA HDD


• Lite-On DVD-Rom


• Albatron PCX5750


• Windows XP SP1

Testing

• SISoft Sandra 2004 Memory Bandwidth Benchmark


• PC Magazine Business Winstone 2004


• PC Magazine Content Creation 2004


• style="font-size:85%;">Far Cry


• Unreal Tournament 2004

We will start off with Sandra 2004's Memory Bandwidth benchmark.


Considering the differences in data rate, the results for the memory bandwidth benchmark are pretty much as expected. Now it's time to get into some productivity benchmarks with PC Magazine's Business Winstone 2004 and Content Creation 2004.




As you can see, there are some modest gains, but nothing to get excited about. The margin of difference between DDR2 and DDR here is very negligible, less than a full point in either benchmark.


One of the limitations of our motherboard is it's lack of DDR2 667 support. It will only support up to DDR2 533. We will of course be running the DDR memory at DDR400 while the PC5400 runs at DDR2 533. All other memory settings will be stock.

Overclocking

Since there is little change in performance running both the DDR and DDR2 modules at stock speeds, what kind of overclock are we going to get out of our DDR2? While we tried to overclock the DDR, we didn't get more than about 2 or 3 MHz out of it due to it's very tight timings. I would have loved to loosen the timings, but our Gigabyte motherboard (IMO - a piece of junk) had no options for the memory timings in the BIOS. However, we were able to push the DDR2 quite far and keep it stable.




We got the memory up to a whopping 607MHz which pushed our processor all the way up to 3.2GHz from it's base of 2.8GHz before the motherboard crapped out. Granted this is well below what the rated speed of the memory is, but I'm betting that once we get a better motherboard in with some serious overclocking headroom, we'll see the memory really shine.

Conclusions

When you get right down to it, for today's performance the differences between using DDR and DDR2 at 533MHz, there is little to no difference. Where DDR2 will shine, is in it's overclocking potential and the promise of future applications making use of it's enhanced speed and bandwidth. As when DDR was first introduced over SDRAM, it will be a while before these advantages are fully realized, but DDR2 will be sure to come into it's own sooner rather than later. Right now, there is no reason to upgrade your existing system based solely on DDR2. However, having said that, if you are already thinking it's time to upgrade, I would definitely recommend going with a DDR2 platform for future expandability not to mention it's overclocking potential.

We have every intention of revisiting this question in the future again once we get our hands on a better motherboard for further testing. Plus, I'm sure with a more stable board, we can reach some serious overclocks with this memory. So be sure to stay tuned in the near future for more information and articles following the progression of DDR2 and what it can mean for you.