The Crucial PC2-8500 follows on the heels of an already good product, the PC2-8000 series, as the fastest offered DDR2 memory module from Crucial Technology. We were very curious to see in our tests how the new memory would perform, especially compared with the Crucial PC2-8000. The design hasn't changed and Crucial follows its traditional yellow/orange colouring for its BallistiX series.

According to our tests, the memory reached 615.00MHz with a voltage of 2.4V! That's 163MHz higher than what Crucial advertises for this product. The Micron-D memory chipsets seem to work wonderfully and this kit will allow tremendous overclocking capabilities with low timings. With lower speeds, you can even run 1T at 400MHz while the DDR2 1000MHz (2.1~2.2V) seems the best initial setting for overclocking a CPU. Of course, this applies only to Nvidia 680i chipset based boards. Before buying this memory kit, be sure to check your motherboard memory voltages, although most currently sold motherboards can support up to 2.4V without any problem.

Compared with the OCZ PC2-9200 FlexXLC memory series, the Crucial PC2-8500 seems to be slightly faster. The differences are minimal and may differ with a different motherboard than the one we used for our tests. On the other hand, the Crucial PC2-8500 modules are almost US$60 higher in price than the OCZ PC2-9200 FlexXLC series, so this could influence your decision to buy these modules. If you are looking for a high performance memory kit, the Crucial PC2-8500 is a good option. We highly recommend the Crucial PC2-8500 as a very good product.