|
Test System
For this review we'll
be using an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard which is based on Intel's
975X chipset. Here is a basic rundown of the test system:
|
Hardware |
Model |
|
Motherboard: |
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe |
|
CPU |
Intel C2D E6600 |
|
Video Card |
Gigabyte ATi Radeon X1900 XTX |
|
Memory |
Mushkin HP Series
PC2-6400
4-5-4-11 |
Testing
|
 The majority of
testing will be done using SiSoft Sandra Pro Business version
2007.9.10.105. ClubOC has been using SiSoft Sandra for many years and
it's pretty much our favorite benchmarking program for testing memory
and processors.
|
|
Memory Bus Speed:
|
800MHz |
| Memory
Voltage: |
2.1v |
| Memory
Timings: |
4-5-4-11 |
| CPU Bus
Speed: |
266MHz |
| Final CPU
Clock Speed: |
2.4GHz (default) |
Running at CPU and
memory defaults, hitting 800MHz was effortless. No tweaking required
what so ever. I simply plugged
in the memory, set the memory timings to 4-5-4-11 and voltage to 2.1v and rebooted.
Once again, ASUS shows us why their motherboards are so popular in the
enthusiast community. So at CPU and memory defaults, we have a Sandra
score of 5669/5680. So if you are not an overclocker or a tweaker, these
numbers should be extremely close to what you should be expecting. Now
let's move on and see how much headroom this memory has in the
overclocking department.
|
Memory Bus Speed:
|
889MHz |
| Memory
Voltage: |
2.2v |
| Memory
Timings: |
4-5-4-11 |
| CPU Bus
Speed: |
266MHz |
| Final CPU
Clock Speed: |
2.4GHz
(default) |
To my amazement,
the Mushkin memory was able to handle the straight up memory only
overclocking of the 889MHz selection in the ASUS bios. The only thing I
had to do was increase memory voltage by .1v, which is still within
Mushkin specs. This time I received a Sandra score of 5828/5836,
a nice performance increase over stock with very little effort. Now let's go back
to 800MHz and tighten up the timings and see what happens.
|
Memory Bus Speed:
|
800MHz |
| Memory
Voltage: |
2.2v |
| Memory
Timings: |
4-4-4-10 |
| CPU Bus
Speed: |
266MHz |
| Final CPU
Clock Speed: |
2.4GHz
(default) |
I was unable to
lower the latency timings too much, but I was able to maintain a 100%
stable system at 4-4-4-10 at 2.2v. When I say "100%stable", I mean 100%
stable, even with demanding games like Battlefield 2142. This time I had
a score of 5682/5702. This is a slight increase over default
settings, but it proves just how stable this memory is. This time let's
overclock the CPU.
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