Are Samsung TCCD IC’s Dead?

Are They Dead?

For the past couple of weeks, insiders in the memory industry have been talking about the end of Samsung TCCD IC’s. This would be a devastating blow to the overclocking/enthusiast community as these are currently the only IC’s that can hit low latency timings of 2-2-2-5 for DDR1 memory. Many in the hardware community will recall the famous Winbond BH-5 IC’s, and when their production ended the industry was without any true low latency memory. Corsair was a godsend when months later they came out with their XMS XL memory featuring Samsung TCCD IC’s, and thus, the rebirth of 2-2-2-5 memory. Once the Corsair XMS XL modules hit the market every memory company under the sun started using the same Samsung IC’s on their high performance memory lines. If you are an overclocker/gamer/enthusiast chances are you have heard of these IC’s!

The article posted today by The Inq’s Will Harris didn’t give all the details that the overclocker/enthusiasts need to know. This was made obvious by the amount of mail we received after the article made its way around to various forums and news sites. The most common questions were: Is this article factual? Should I buy more memory now? How long will the current TCCD supply last? What’s going to replace the Samsung TCCD IC? Today we have been in contact with Corsair, Kingston, OCZ, Muskin, and Samsung. Instead of giving you “rumors” from various sources we thought that it’d be nice to get official comments from each company about the Samsung TCCD article and see what the truth is from the people that matter.

We also have some interesting information reguarding some of the Winbond IC’s that you all know and used to love. You will have to make it to the end of the article to find out about what we have to say on the Winbond IC’s though! �