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Packaging and
Installation
When it comes to memory packaging, Crucial is a little
different than the crowd. Instead of using the
standard plastic bubble pack, Crucial packages their memory
in a cardboard box.
The memory is well protected in the box with plenty of space
all around the memory. Each stick is wrapped in its
own static packaging.
Crucial dresses their memory in yellow heatspreaders.
Generally you either love 'em or hate 'em. Personally, I prefer
the sexy black heatspreaders on the Ballistix Tracer memory. But,
the black and Gold color scheme isn't too bad.
Testing and
Overclocking
I chose the Asus P5K3 Deluxe which has an
Intel P35 chipset, for testing. This is going to mean that
adjusting the memory speed is going to require adjusting the
FSB. A variety of FSB speeds will be used ranging from
400MHz to 450MHz. Here is a basic rundown of the test system:
| Hardware |
Model |
| Motherboard: |
Asus P5K3 Deluxe Wi-Fi Edition |
| CPU |
Intel
C2D E6600 |
| Video Card |
eVGA 8800GTS 320 |
| Storage |
Seagate 400GB SATA |
| Optical |
Lite-On 16X DVD+/-RW with
Lightscribe |
| Memory |
Crucial PC3-12800 |
| Cooling |
Corsair Nautilus 500 Water cooling
kit |
According to Crucial's specs, it's safe to run the memory at
1.8v +/- 0.075v, so I voided the warranty by setting the
BIOS to 1.95v for overclocking. Please
be careful when adjusting the voltage. If you're not
sure, don't increase it beyond the factory specs.
Results
The Crucial PC3-12800 overclocked pretty well. We were able to increase the speed
from 1600MHz to 1800MHz. We were also able to tighten the timings
at default from 8-8-8 to 7-7-7 1T. This memory acted
like it wanted to overclock higher, so I'm not going to say
that 1800 was the limit. It's possible that we have
just hit the limit of our 6600 that was used during testing.
The reason I say this is because at 1800MHz I was still able
to use the 1T setting. Let's see how this
effected the benchmarks.
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