Mushkin also comes back to participate in the roundup and provided us their PC2-4200. At the time of receiving the memory, Mushkin only had the option of PC2-4200. During our testing period, Mushkin expanded their options to value PC2-4200 and performance PC2-4200, as well as a PC2-5300 line. The Mushkin PC2-4200 we've received comes with silver heatspreaders and a plain Jane sticker label. The memory really looks plain, but that's not something that'll take points off the overall memory scores.
The funny thing about the sample we've received is that although the memory is rated to run 266MHz, the latencies were rated to be 4-4-4 and no default voltage was specified. Pretty much all the competitors' solutions were running at 3-3-3 or lower. I found this to be extremely disappointing. It seemed to me that the sample I received was somewhat along the lines of Mushkin's value PC2-4200. After playing with the memory for a couple of days, I found this to be different. The memory performed more like Mushkin's performance PC2-4200 and was able to run as low as 3-3-3-8 at 266MHz.
I proceeded to overclock the PC2-4200 and was extremely surprised. It ran PC2-5400 speeds without a problem but needed loose latencies of 4-4-4-12. This is certainly a big step for such low priced DDR2 modules. You're actually getting the performance of PC2-5300 without paying the price. I continued further and found that like the rest of the DDR2 contenders, the Mushkin PC2-4200 reached the motherboard cap. In the end, it was able to run 354MHz with latencies of 4-4-4-12 and a voltage of just 1.8v.
- 266MHz 3-3-3-8
- 337MHz 4-4-4-12
- 354MHz 4-4-4-12
