Overclocking

Before we get into overclocking, the first thing I wanted to determine is what are the default timings of the ram. Here's a shot of the BIOS, which shows the SPD settings…

The timings are nothing to go nuts over, as the settings are not all that aggressive. TwinMOS does emphasize stability though, so that's probably the reason for the rather conservative timings. At stock speeds of PC3200, I started to play around with the various timings. Right off the bat, 2-2-2-5 resulted in Windows not booting, as was the case with 2-2-2-6. At 2-2-2-7, the system was a little unstable, but by boosting the memory voltage to 2.7v, everything was fine. After 20 minutes or so, the system started crashing constantly, so I had to up the voltage to 2.8v. Memtest86 passed the test, and we began working on the clock speed.

At 2-2-2-7, the maximum stable overclock was 214MHz (DDR428). At 2.5-2-2-7, we managed a 220MHz (DDR440). Using the stock timings, we improved our overclocking to 225MHz (DDR450).

2-2-2-6 did work at DDR333 (which is below spec for this kit), but 2-2-2-5 did not.

Since these are not matched pairs, I was interested in seeing how they would do in overclocking as individual sticks. In terms of timings, both sticks had the same limitations at stock speeds. 2-2-2-7 was still the best we were able to manage, though I only had to boost the voltage to 2.7v. At those timings, the best OC we managed were the following…

Stick 1: 215MHz
Stick 2: 217MHz

Keep in mind that both sticks as a pair, we only managed 214MHz. What does this demonstrate? Well, if they were matched pairs, I would expect equivalent OC ability out of each, as was the case with the other Dual Channel kits we've reviewed. I did test if one stick of single-sided TwinMOS would out-OC a double-sided stick of Corsair TWINX (I don't have double-sided TwinMOS here unfortunately), but it did not. So much for that experiment.

Therefore, in summary, here's our results of our best, and most stable, overclocks:

	2-2-2-7	2.5-2-2-7	2.5-3-3-8
TwinMOS PC3200	214MHz (428DDR)	220MHz (440DDR)	225MHz (450DDR)

Test Setup

Abit NF7-M nForce2: Athlon XP 2500, 2 x 256MB TwinMOS PC3200 DC Ram, MSI FX5200-VTD, 120GB Western Digital SE 8MB Cache, Windows XP SP1, nForce 2 Unified Driver Package 2.0, Detonator 43.45.

Test software will be:

SiSoft Sandra 2003
PC Mark 2002 Memory
PiFast
3D Mark 2003
UT2003

We'll be presenting benchmarks at both the ram's stock speed (400MHz), as well as at the overclocked speeds, with the timings as shown earlier this page. Tests were done with the FSB and memory speed syncronous @ 166 (333DDR, 2-2-2-6), and asyncronous for 200MHz (400DDR) and up. Corsair TWINX PC3200 will be the comparison ram for these tests.

Previous Page - The TwinMOS Dual Channel Kit