Now comes the most important part of the review, testing the memory. This particular memory is designed to run at memory timings of 3-4-4-8 at 2.75v. These settings may seem pretty high, but it is the JEDEC standard latency for PC4000. Two platforms will be used for testing the memory, but only the second one will be used to obtain benchmarks. The first is based on a DFI LAN Party NFII motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ processor. The second will be our primary test system and it is configured as follows: 

System #1

     My main concern with system #1 was compatibility with the nForce II Ultra chipset. It is extremely tough for a Thunderbird core CPU to achieve bus speeds over 200MHz, but with the Corsair Pro Series, I was easily able to go as high as 220MHz FSB (440MHz DDR). This is just shy of the 500MHz rating on the memory, but it does help prove that this memory is stable with the nForce II Ultra.

System #2

     Now for the real testing. Since the memory is rated at 500MHz, that's exactly where we will start out at. With the memory set at 3-4-4-8 @ 2.75v, the system booted right up at 250MHz FSB (500MHz DDR). Even though the CPU is overclocked to 3GHz, we still have plenty of overclocking headroom as we already know this system will run as high as 290MHz FSB with another brand of memory.

     Just when I thought things were going just fine at 500MHz DDR, the system crashed while trying to run a SiSoft Sandra memory benchmark. Over the next couple weeks, and countless crashes, the only way I was able to get the system stable at 250MHz FSB (500MHz DDR) was to up the DDR voltage to 1.85v. Once at 1.85v, the system ran very smooth and stable, even when playing 3D Games. Now let's see what SiSoft Sandra Pro has to say.

Corsair XMS 4000 Pro Series (1gb kit)

     Once we overcame the stability problem by overvolting the memory, the memory performed extremely well. It even out performed our current champ, the OCZ PC4000EL Gold at the same speed and settings.