

It was quite a surprise when Mushkin asked if we were interested in reviewing their latest PC3200 2-2-2 Special. Did they have new memory capable of the 2-2-2 speeds at DDR400 that we had seen in the past with Winbond BH5 chips? Mushkin's answer was even more surprising! Mushkin says that they still have BH6 chips to build PC3200, and they have enough stock to last 2 to 3 more months. No one else in the memory industry has any Winbond BH5 or BH6 left, so we knew AnandTech readers would want to know that Mushkin still has them available.



The exit of Winbond from the active memory market has caused quite a stir. The BH5 chips are gone, which all the DDR400 2-2-2 ultra-low latency used. What many don't realize is that the more recent CH6 and CH5 are also gone, which were being used in Rev. B products that have 2-2-3 timings - with Ras-to-Cas timing at 3. There are still some memory chips from other vendors that can manage 2-2-3 timings, but nothing has come down the pike yet that can fully duplicate Winbond BH5 at 2-2-2 at DDR400.



Since the Mushkin PC3200 2-2-2 Special is clearly the last lot of this legendary memory, we were interested to see what they would do in our benchmarks. Would these Mushkin sticks still astound as BH5 has in the past, or are these the last BH6 chips not quite up to the performance that we came to expect from the best BH5?



