Corsair CM2X1024-6400PRO & CM2X512A-5400UL

Memory (DDR4/DDR5) and Storage (SSD/NVMe) 366 Page 5 of 8 Published by

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Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system.

Mainboards

ABIT AA8XE

Processor

Pentium 4 560 - 3.6 GHz (Prescott)

Graphics Cards

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT (PCX), 256 MB

Memory

1024 MB (2x512MB) DDR2 - XMS2-5400 (CM2X512A-5400UL)
2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 - XMS2-6400 Pro (CM2X1024-6400PRO)

Software

Windows XP Professional SP2
Intel Chipset Driver 6.3.0.1008
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
ForceWare 71.84
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)

3DMark03
Everest
Doom 3
PCMark 2004
SiSoft Sandra
 

Things that make you go hmmm...

What will be very interesting to see in our benchmarks is that a DDR frequency of 533 and fast memory timings, in-game, roughly performs the same as that same bar of memory when clocked faster at 600 MHz but with either similar or slower timings. So the fastest memory frequency versus the best memory timings would be optimal, keep that in mind.

During our tests the only thing we did was change the memory frequency. And as last test we made one system wide overclock by increasing the FSB which HAS an impact on performance as you start overclocking the rest of the system, along with the CPU being the two most essential factors.

In short, I'd opt low latency memory over high speed memory with a high latency memory any day.

The numerous possibilities in tweaking

There are so friggin many ways to tweak/overclock memory let me explain a few techniques that we used today.

1) Altering memory timings.

By increasing memory voltage you usually can get better results from your memory. The Jedec standard for this type memory is 1.6 volts. Trust me, 1.7 or 1.9 will never be an issue, in fact as far as Corsair is concerned you can take it towards 2.1 volts. Now try and lower your memory timings. We'll do exactly that in the tests we run. Thus show you performance based on the same memory frequency yet with different timings.

2) Just fooling around with a memory divider

You are basically limited to your mainboard tweaking options when it comes to BIOS settings.

If your mainboard supports it, then often you'll find options to run your memory at a faster or slower frequency. The mainboard used for our test today allows DDR 400, 533 and 600 MHz operations purely based on memory dividers.

Anyway, we settled for a 500 and 600 MHz DDR frequency memory divider wise. where we still where able to maintain default SPD timings easily. Our voltage level was steady at 1.9 volts. We'll show you the results the memory divider overclocks hardly have a huge effect though.

To see what performance differences we are able to get based purely on memory timings and frequency yet with that CPU in all cases at 3600 MHz. We'll also do the following, step 3.

3) Raising the FSB yet stay at 3600 MHz

The most performance you'll get from your memory is when you actually overclock your PC. In our case we used an 500 dollar Pentium 4 3.6 GHz processor which quite honestly is a joy to overclock. We watercooled it though as you can fry an egg on that Prescott core. It's default clock is 3600 MHz and can get 4200 MHz out of it if we want to.

So can we still push the memory higher then? Yes once we lower the CPU multiplier to 14, give the CPU a little more voltage and then raise the FSB towards 260 MHz the results should be more promising for sure. By lowering the CPU multiplier and increasing the FSB we can still test at 3600 MHz, yet with faster clocked memory. With the nifty CAS timings we'd had plenty of memory bandwidth. Check the benchmarks in the following pages.

4) Raising the FSB and pass that 3600 MHz

Step four is however the end-result for most of us. After trying step 1 to 3 we now know exactly what the memory can handle for it's frequency and timings. But the best performance is obtained once we achieve a higher clock frequency on both the memory and processor. We set the CPU Multiplier at 14 and raised the FSB towards 285 MHz. Now that the stuff we are talking about. If your memory can't hanlde it then forget about such a high FSB. if you have have everything right in your PC and tweak/overclock the entire system your gaming performance will benefit from this very much.

We started at 800 MHz and then increased the speed in 20 MHz intervals, which basically works out to 5 MHz FSB jumps.

** Before we begin our test sessions. What we should note is that the standard SPD timing for the 2 GB kit are better then what we see on the suggested label. During this test we'll gladly take the better SPD timings. Once you would overclock the memory to the maximum recommended MHz (800) you'll need to lower the timings as suggested on the memory label. The 1GB kit can do such aggressive timings that it is the other way around as some mainboards would not even post if they can't handle that speed. Ours can so we set them at 3:2:2:8. Also immediately we upped the memory voltage to 1.9 volts.

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