Corsair XMS Xpert RAM

Name: Corsair XMS Xpert RAM - Page 7
Brand: Corsair

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 11:45 PM EDT

For our next set of numbers, we focused on the maximum overclockability of Corsair's TWINXP1024-3200XL memory. Using an Athlon 64 4000+ CPU, we raised the Front Side Bus speed (HTT clock) while concurrently lowering our processor's multiplier. We tried to keep the CPU as close to it's stock 2.4GHz clock speed as possible. For these tests, we locked the PCI Express clock to 100MHz, raised the CPU voltage to 1.65v, and raised the memory voltage to 2.9v. We also relaxed the memory timings to 2.5-3-3-10, which allowed us to hit much higher clock speeds.

Overclocked Performance with SiSoft SANDRA 2005

Raw Bandwidth

With a bump in voltage and some relaxed timings, we were able to push the Corsair XMS Xpert modules to a maximum clock speed of 241MHz (DDR482). Even though the latency was higher, the extra clock speed increased available memory bandwidth significantly. In the Integer portion of SANDRA's memory bandwidth benchmark, the Xpert RAM was able to break the 7GB/s mark and hit almost 6.9GB/s in the floating point part of the test. The Corsair Pro modules were able to hit a slightly higher frequency, and as such scored a bit better in this test while overclocked.

Tags: Corsair, RAM, XM, MS, XP, air, rsa, RT, AI, AM

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com