Test System and SANDRA Benchmark

Test System and SANDRA Benchmark
I have to make an additional side-note on our test-method. It was very hard to test this memory module at it's maximum potential, this is not because of the memory module but because of our test system. Let me explain, this test rig we used makes use of a Intel engineering sample Pentium 4 2.4 GHz processor and Intel PX845PE mainboard. Under the ideal circumstances we would have lowered the tact frequency of the processor and then increase the Front Side Bus speed of the Pentium 4. That way we would have been able to test the memory way beyond specifications. Unfortunately our mainboard does not allow changing the Clock Frequency of our unlocked Pentium 4 Processor (18x). Therefore we can only pump up that FSB until the CPU can't go any further.

We got it at (4x)155MHz which is not a bad results at all yet not quite enough to max out this memory. As result we where only able to test the Memory module at 400 MHz while it should be able to handle a tad above that straight out of the box.

We already have a new Pentium 4 mainboard here that supports the new 800 MHz bus and thus also 100% DDR400 at very high tact frequencies. It will be used in future reviews.

Benchmarks
Let's fire up some benchmarks. This first bechmarks was done with the help of SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. Sandra provides similar level of information to Norton SI, Quarterdeck WinProbe/Manifest, etc. The Win32 version is 32-bit and comes in both ANSI (legacy for Windows 98/Me systems) and native Unicode (Windows NT4/200X/.Net) formats. The Win64 version is 64-bit and comes in native Unicode format.

Do note that all the SANDRA benchmarks are synthetic and thus are may not tally with real-life performance. The latter stands for whatever your environment is, i.e. which applications you run with what amount of data and so on. It is up to you to decide whether what Sandra measures is what you want to measure.

• Download SANDRA (a special Guru3D.com edition).

As stated on the first page of this review the Crucial PC3200 DIMM's run at default extremely safe JEDEC standard timings with 3-4-4-8 at 2.5V That by itself created a little problem as our test platform does not even can handle  such 'safe' settings. The mainboard forces it towards 2.5-3-3-7 memory timings. As long as the module can handle that then all is just fine. Of course it can handle just that.

The results shown above is the measured memory bandwidth in MB/sec that the module delivers, to the left the normal (standard) mainboard RAM timing settings and to the right aggressive RAM timings. As you can see Crucial's PC3200 will get you over 3000MB/sec bandwidth as it should be. The memory does not handle aggressive RAM timings very well and manages to remain stable at 333 MHz with CAS 2:2:2

Don't get me wrong here, the product is not advertised as CAS2 compatible and therefor it doesn't need to be compatible with that setting. We just test the module on what it can and can not handle. That way you know what to expect when you buy this product.