Conclusion
We've looked at the main parts of this Corsair XMS3200 RAM: The RAM itself, including the chips that make up the whole stick of RAM; the overclocking potential of one stick of this RAM; and lastly a quick look at its performance compared to both a PC2700 stick of Corsair memory and a generic stick of "PC2700" RAM. What can we conclude about this stick of RAM?
First, when we look at the RAM itself. It looks nice, as the black heatspreader shows though it doesn't seem to do anything for cooling. The fact that the RAM is 6ns is slightly a disappointment as the previous RAM I looked at from Corsair was also made with 'overclocked' RAM chips. Otherwise the RAM itself was pretty ordinary with nothing striking me as extremely interesting.
When testing the overclocking we had problems finding the limits as the RAM was hitting the limits of both the motherboard and the CPU used for testing. The ~30MHz improvement overclocking the RAM at turbo settings at 3v was very nice to see as the RAM worked at an extreme 214MHz FSB. At fast settings the RAM easily reached and surpassed its rated speed of 200MHz and with the voltage turned up we couldn't find the limits of this setting.
Due to the overclock of this RAM, the increase in performance in both games and video is pretty good, a 6-7% improvement in real world applications is very good to see. This allows the encoding of videos in about ten minutes less than it would previously, and it can also help you get 6fps more out of JKII with the Parhelia at 1024*768.
When you buy RAM you expect to pay a bit more for high quality RAM. The lifetime warranty gives shows that Corsair thinks so much of its products that it is willing to support them for that long. The RAM performs very well, and overclocks better than any other RAM I've encountered, though the price is very high, at least according to . This RAM's overclocking ability makes it a very good deal, though the very high price lowers ones enthusiasm slightly.
I would like to thank for providing me with this RAM for testing as well as the Corsair PC2700 RAM I reviewed previously.
Good Points
- High quality RAM
- Overclocks better than my CPU and motherboard
- Lifetime Warranty
- Turbo settings at 210+MHz (2-2-2 1T)
Bad Points
- High Price
- Can't do 200MHz with Turbo settings at 2.5v
Bottom Line
This RAM is some of the best overclocking RAM I've seen. The price is very high, but one would expect that from high quality RAM. If you are an overclocker or need 200MHz memory speed, then this is definitely the RAM for you, but otherwise this RAM is too expensive for the average user who doesn't need it, yet.
Agree? Disagree? Discuss it in our forums
Previous Page - Real World Tests
Home
|
