TwinMOS DDR400 PC3200 Dual Channel

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/26/2003 06:00 AM [ 0 comment(s) ]

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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 2.8 GHz processor and Intel PX865Pmainboard. 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 locked Pentium 4 Processor. Therefore we can only pump up that FSB until the CPU can't go any further.

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).

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 set by SPD.

Sandra	MB/sec
Default MEM DDR400	4566
TwinMOS PC3200 default	4619
TwinMOS PC3200 440	5054
TwinMOS PC3200 460	n/a

Unfortunately TwinMOS memory is not very good for overclocking. We tried CAS2 even CAS 2.5:7:2:2 yest is the system would hang. It might be due to the fact that our mainboard had a memory performance (PAT) setting enabled. This is consistent with all benchmarks. So aggressive timings are simply out of the question with this product. Let's have a look at PCMArk 2004 memory performance:

PCMark 2004	Default MEM DDR400	TwinMOS Default	TwinMOS 440
Raw Block Read - 8 MB	4754.1 MB/s	4773.9 MB/s	5208.9 MB/s
Raw Block Read - 4 MB	4807.2 MB/s	4829.7 MB/s	5247.9 MB/s
Raw Block Read - 192 KB	21066.7 MB/s	21321.2 MB/s	23201.1 MB/s
Raw Block Read - 4 KB	39571.4 MB/s	39044.9 MB/s	43582.3 MB/s
Raw Block Write - 8 MB	4023.0 MB/s	4038.3 MB/s	4428.4 MB/s
Raw Block Write - 4 MB	4023.5 MB/s	4040.0 MB/s	4426.7 MB/s
Raw Block Write - 192 KB	12099.6 MB/s	12170.2 MB/s	13332.2 MB/s
Raw Block Write - 4 KB	12044.2 MB/s	12119.3 MB/s	12818.4 MB/s
Raw Block Copy - 8 MB	1462.6 MB/s	1237.2 MB/s	1352.8 MB/s
Raw Block Copy - 4 MB	1499.4 MB/s	1287.2 MB/s	1357.6 MB/s
Raw Block Copy - 192 KB	10192.2 MB/s	10387.8 MB/s	11045.1 MB/s
Raw Block Copy - 4 KB	12039.4 MB/s	12120.1 MB/s	13192.3 MB/s
Random Access - 8 MB	2609.9 MB/s	2625.1 MB/s	2870.9 MB/s
Random Access - 4 MB	2606.1 MB/s	2616.1 MB/s	2865.4 MB/s
Random Access - 192 KB	7507.0 MB/s	7497.2 MB/s	8259.3 MB/s
Random Access - 4 KB	10923.8 MB/s	10972.7 MB/s	12028.3 MB/s

Again, same thing. Extreme memory timings are not an option,. Thew is memory for default systems. It however is capable of a higher than 400 MHZ FSB which leaves some room for voerclockers. It maxes out at 450 MHz and is 100% stable at 440 MHz. That's additional value kids :)

When we have a look at gaming benchmarks we can only demonstrate how well performance is compared with another DDR400 module in dual channel configuration. The results are compared with OCZ's EL-DDR PC3200.

Splinter Cell 1.2b	800x600	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Default DDR400	46	39	31	26
TwinMOS default	46	39	31	26
EL-DDR default	46	39	31	26

HALO	800x600	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Default DDR400	45	42	30	22
TwinMOS default	45	42	30	22
EL-DDR default	45	43	31	22

As you can see there's virtually no difference. Makes sense as it's all about mathematics. The OCZ memory is way more expensive, on the other hand you can handle aggressive times where TwinMOS memory couldn't.

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TwinMOS DDR400 PC3200 Dual Channel
Today we are going to review memory modules from TwinMOS, a dual channel kit with in it 2x256MB DDR PC3200 memory. The modules are based on the DDR400 specification is getting very popular.