Final thoughts
Corsair's TwinX XMS4400 1Gbyte matched memory pack is aimed at enthusiasts who absolutely know that their motherboards will run flawlessly at 275MHz and beyond. By running memory in a synchronous fashion with an overclocked Front-Side Bus or driven clock, performance, as expected, is markedly better than opting for slower, asynchronous RAM. The TwinX4400 pack will suit those users who have either have multiplier-locked, low-speed CPUs that are partial to a jump in FSB/driven clock, or to the hardcore enthusiast who's not scared of using extreme cooling on premier CPUs.Whichever way you cut it, DDR550 memory is extremely useful when the only means of radically raising CPU speed, and by inference performance, is to crank FSB to 275MHz+. It would make a perfect partner to a setup consisting of, say, AMD's Athlon 64 3000/3200 and/or Intel's Pentium 4 2.8GHz/3.0GHz processors. These processors often overclock to 250MHz+ FSB with relatively innocuous cooling, and having synchronous RAM allows you to extract maximum bandwidth and performance from said setup.
I've been impressed with just how high Corsair has been able to take DDR1 memory with utter stability. Samsung's versatile ICs have been tinkered with to provide ultra-high-speed RAM. The very fact that our sample pair ran at DDR560+ with only 2.68v is testament to Corsair's quality control. Indeed, with respect to synchronous running, it would take a special motherboard to fully stretch the modules' MHz ability. If, and only if, your system is screaming out for RAM that can keep up with mutant CPU and chipset overclocks, Corsair's TwinX XMS4400 becomes an ideal choice. Priced at around £200, it's recommended to the select band of enthusiasts who just have an unquenchable need for FSB speed.
