Doom 3
Same story we've been seeing all day. Doom 3 does
get a major boost with the 930MHz settings though.
Photoshop
CS
We're
still working on standardizing this benchmark, but Photoshop is
probably one of the biggest ram hogs on the market. I took a 6MP,
40MB file and ran 15 filters through it. The time it took (minutes,
seconds) was what was recorded and lower times are better.
Pretty good showing by the 5400UL, but clock speeds
seem to rule the day here. The 930MHz set 8000UL finishes on top,
with the 800MHz setting taking second.
Windows Media Encoder 9
As with Photoshop, we can see the differences in
clock speed playing a part in video editing.
Final
Words
Before continuing with our conclusions, we should point out one
obvious thing that is accurate about 90% of the time when dealing
with quality memory products. At equal clock speeds and timings,
you will hardly spot any differences in ram performance. Furthermore,
provided we stick with brand name parts, in many cases you can
easily match overclocks and so forth.
The main reason we stuck with default timings was to simply illustrate
the performance differences at those settings. Yes, we made two
adjustments for the Corsair TWIN2X-8000UL today, but in these
cases we underclocked it. We allowed the MSI P4N Diamond
to detect the default SPDs and ran our benchmarks. Could we have
run the Crucial modules at the same settings as the Corsair at
800MHz? Yes. However, we feel that in this case Crucial should
be selling their modules at those settings. Our benchmarks today
were designed to somewhat compare out of the box performance and
nothing more.
Now, getting back to the actual review, it's pretty obvious that
DDR2 is ready more than ever for the enthusiast market. The fact
that we couldn't even reach the "stock" speeds of the
Corsair TWIN2X-8000UL goes to show that the onus has now shifted
to the memory controller designers. Even at our 930MHz settings,
R.S.T. Pro2 gave the passing grade, which is something we were
unable to do with other ram modules rated at 800MHz. Of course,
in passing the R.S.T. Pro2 tests, stability was never in question
(except at 940MHz and up, but that is more likely a motherboard
issue).
In the event something does go awry, Corsair backs up their products
with a lifetime warranty. Furthermore, there are several avenues
for support including a great forum, email and a toll free number.
The only possible drawback we can see is the overclocking potential
past its rated speed is currently unknown since our MSI motherboard
could not even reach the rated speed. Priced at about $250
USD, it is a bit expensive but not much more so than PC6400
kits. Of course, whether or not the Corsair TWIN2X-8000UL will
be worth it will depend heavily on your current setup.
(If your PC can handle it)
Pros: Great performance, quality construction, lifetime
warranty and plenty of support routes.
Cons: None for the ram, but possibly the rest of your
hardware setup.
Bottom Line: If
you're running air cooling on a 915P/925X based motherboard with
a Pentium 4 5xx series processor, this kit may not make a whole
lot of sense. Otherwise, owners of 955X or nForce 4 SLI boards
with a Pentium Extreme Edition will want to give this kit a close
look.
If
you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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