DDR2-675 - A High Speed Update from Corsair and Kingston
Performance at SPD Settings
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We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant, with the memory configured by their SPDs. SANDRA consists of a set of information and diagnostic utilities that can provide a host of useful information about your hardware and operating system. We ran SANDRA's Memory Bandwidth test with Corsair's and Kingston's memory modules installed on our Asus P5WD2 Premium
(Note: Although we had the Asus motherboard we used for testing configured to detect memory timings by SPD, it ran both memory kits with 5-5-5-12 timings, unless we manually specified otherwise.)
The performance of Corsair's TWINX set placed just slightly ahead of Kingston's. In the Integer test, the Corsair modules had a bandwidth score 72MB/s higher than the Kingston modules, while in the Floating Point test, the Corsair sticks posted a score 61MB/s higher than the Kingston sticks. In general, while both sticks were tested using the same timings, Corsair's sticks edged out Kingston's by just over a one percent difference.
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For our next round of benchmarks, we ran the Memory performance module built-into Futuremark's PCMark04. For those interested in more than just the graphs, we've got a quote from Futuremark that explains exactly what this test does and how it works...
"The Memory test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the memory subsystem. The memory subsystem consists of various devices on the PC. This includes the main memory, the CPU internal cache (known as the L1 cache) and the external cache (known as the L2 cache). As it is difficult to find applications that only stress the memory, we explicitly developed a set of tests geared for this purpose. The tests are written in C++ and assembly. They include: Reading data blocks from memory, Writing data blocks to memory performing copy operations on data blocks, random access to data items and latency testing."
The PCMark04 results were quite similar to what we saw with Sandra 2004. When using PCMark04's memory performance module, the Corsair TWIN2X1024A-5400UL kit posted a score 45 points higher than the Kingston KHX6000D2K2/1G kit. The margin, however, is still quite small, this time only less than a percentage point.
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We also ran through a batch of time demos with the popular shooter Unreal Tournament 2004. We ran these tests at the "Fastest" setting with a low resolution of 640 X 480, using 16-bit color and textures. Running Unreal Tournament 2004 with a high-end graphics card at these minimal settings isolates processor and memory performance without being limited by the graphics subsystem.
The frame rates we achieved in Unreal Tournament 2004 were quite high, regardless of which memory kit we had installed. It would be quite hard to notice the difference in actual gameplay, but looking at the numbers we have to give Corsair the edge in this final test as well.
