Memory speeds hit a bit of a rock at PC3200, with only extreme overclockers needing anything more than that. AMD platforms showed little or know benefit with asynchronous memory speeds, and although the P4 showed good gains, only a fraction of people had the equipment required to go for the super high FSBs needed. The 800Mhz FSB Pentium 4s have changed all of that however, with their 200MHz stock FSB and bags of room for overclocking, PC3500 suddenly seemed very slow.
As always the performance brands like Corsair, OCZ and GeIL were out of the traps with PC3700 and faster solutions, but now there are several solutions for super high memory speed we thought it only right to grab as many as possible and run a shoot out in typical OcPrices fashion.
Up for contention today we have A-Data PC4000, Corsair XMS4000, Corsair XMS4000 Pro, Kingston HyperX PC4000, OCZ PC4000 EL-DDR, OCZ PC4000 EL-DDR Gold, GeIL PC4000 and Mushkin PC4000. All but one of these are retail samples borrowed from stores so that “cherry picking” does not become a factor in determining which ram is the best to buy. The Corsair XMS Pro is just too new to be in any UK stores at the time of press, but we have never had reason to doubt the integrity of Corsair's samples, with them consistently showing the same performance as real end-users obtain on forums.
Our test rig originally consisted of an Asus P4C800 motherboard, an Intel 2.4C Processor, an Enermax 550W PSU and a Vapochill Premium Edition. Problems with the Asus, which eventually caused it to die half way through the testing however meant that we ended up using an Abit IC7 Max 3 with the latest 1:1 BIOS installed. We ran a special version of winmemtest to verify stability of each module in Dual Channel mode. It’s very similar to memtest86 which many of you may have used before, but more accurately simulates a windows environment. If the modules pass 5 runs of memtest we then proceed to windows where they must complete a 30min Sandra memory burn in, whilst 3DMark 2001SE loops over the top. If they pass this they are considered stable.
We tested our memory modules at the following speeds:
2.8V 200MHz 1:1 CAS 2 3-3-7
2.8V 250MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
2.8V 250MHz 1:1 CAS 2.5 4-4-7
2.8V 260MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
2.8V 260MHz 1:1 CAS 2.5 4-4-7
2.8V 265MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
2.8V 265MHz 1:1 CAS 2.5 4-4-7
2.8V 270MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
2.8V 270MHz 1:1 CAS 2.5 4-4-7
2.8V 275MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
2.9V 275MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
2.9V 200MHz 1:1 CAS 3 4-4-7
Why the last test? Simply to see if any of the sticks had problems at high voltages.
