Memory, something that is one of the more
important pieces to a computer. It is one of the few things
you need to actually start building your computer. But more
importantly, it is one of the best general performance boosters
that you can get for PCs. Adding more memory can, to a certain
point, make your computer run smoother, or increase the speed
of certain memory limited applications.
Over the past few years it has started gaining
popularity as an overclocking tool, with the standards of PC133,
PC2700 and others being superseded by higher speed RAM.
With the release of the Pentium IV C series and its associated
800MHz FSB, higher than PC3200 RAM became very popular.
The 2.4GHz version of the processor was an overclockers delight
as it could easily reach 250MHz FSB without problems. This
lead to the release of high speed RAM so that you could overclock
this system, while keeping memory speed in synch.
Crucial/Micron have not been known as a overclockers
memory company, rather they are some of the most stable and inexpensive
'name brand' RAM you can get. They are trying to add to
that reputation the ability to provide some of the best overclockers
RAM. With this new foray they have given this series a name,
Ballistix. So lets see what this memory can do.
Crucial Ballistix PC3200 C2
Crucial was kind enough to send us their high
end DDR memory, in the PC3200 C2 1GB matched set. What do
they give you in the way of a package, is there a lot included
or is it a plain box. Lets look at a few pictures to see.
We can see something interesting
from these pictures. First, Crucial has decided to ship
the memory in two boxes instead of one box that is a matched
pair inside the packaging. This probably will not be a
problem at all, as its more for the customers peace of mind
in having two sticks of memory packaged together which are guaranteed
to work. Secondly, Crucial has decided to go with the
motto, simplicity is best. This means the external package
has nothing that is really eye catching, nor does the inside
do much to allay this. An interesting addition, and something
that points toward their target market is the Ballistix case
sticker in each package.
The memory itself has a part
number of
BL6464Z402.16TG which points it to a 512MB stick of PC3200
with timings of 2-3-2-6, slower than some of the other new PC3200
memory that is out there with CAS 2 settings. The heatsinks
that are on the RAM are nice and copper colored, and did get warm
in our testing, though nothing more than slightly warm at 3v.
Overall the RAM itself looks the same as most other overclockers
RAM, but its what's on the inside that counts right isn't it.
Lets see how this RAM overclocks on our test PIV 2.4C system.
Overclocking
So how well does this PC3200
RAM overclock? Lets look at the results.
We see that the Crucial memory
certainly does overclock fairly well, as it can make it to 261MHz
or almost PC4200 speeds. At this level we had the voltage
on the RAM at 3v, with the timings set to their most relaxed
at 3-4-4-8. Overall a 30% improvement in clock speed for
this stick of RAM. Remember though that your results may
vary as this is a sampling of only one set of memory.
Test System
| CPU: |
Intel Pentium IV 2.4C -
200MHz FSB (at various FSB's and CPU Speeds)
|
| Motherboard: |
MSI 845PE Max2
|
| Memory: |
1GB
Corsair XMS TwinX PC4000 Kit (2*512MB) |
| Hard
Drives : |
40GB Maxtor 6E040L0, 40GB
Maxtor 6l040J2, 2*80GB Maxtor 6Y080M0 SATA Hard Drives
|
| Video
Card: |
ATi
AiW 9600Pro 128MB |
| Operating
System: |
Windows
XP Pro SP2/ Direct X 9.0c |
| Drivers: |
Catalyst
4.10 beta |
| Cooler: |
Vantec
AreoFlow |
| Case: |
CoolerGuys
Windtunnel IV |
| Power
Supply: |
Sea
Sonic SS-400FB |
| Direct
X Benchmarks: |
Unreal
Tournament 2003 (HardOCP software 2.1 - CPU Test) |
| OpenGL
Benchmarks: |
Jedi
Knight II Jedi Outcast (time demo) |
| Other
Benchmarks |
XMpeg
5.03 |
DivX
5.20 |
|
Terragen
0.9.19 |
TMPGEnc
Plus 2.59.47.155 |
|
Sciencemark
2.0 Beta Build Nov. 17, 2002 |
|
You will notice that no sound
card was present for our tests, as UT and Jedi Knight get a
boost from removing the card, and this is a test of the RAM
not CPU load. Our only synthetic benchmark was Sciencemark,
which was used to measure bandwidth and latency of the memory,
though as it is synthetic take its results with a grain of salt.
UT2003 was run at a resolution of 640*480,
and Jedi Knight II was run at 1024*768 with high settings.
Terragen was run at the settings I have made for the test.
XMpeg 5.03 was run using the SSE2 optimizations and we used the
video that I have been using for quite a while, from "Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy". TMPGEnc was using the same video
as XMpeg but with it encoded as HuffYUV video.
ScienceMark 2
First we will take a little look at our synthetic
benchmark, Sciencemark. This program is made to test quite
a few different parts of the system, but we will only use the
memory bandwidth/latency test for this review. So lets see
the results for the RAM that we tested.
What can we see in this test. The Crucial
memory, which is rated for tighter timings, takes the lead in
the latency test by 14 CPU cycles, which is a decent amount considering
that the Corsair memory is tweaked quite a bit just to reach the
timings it has in the test. In bandwidth we see that the
Crucial memory at 200MHz can come very close to the bandwidth
that the Corsair memory has at 250MHz. Overclocking the
memory does increase bandwidth but also increases latency which
can be a problem with programs that do a lot of small reads from
memory.
Now that we have some idea of what the performance
graph should look like, lets get on with the real benchmarks.
First we will take a look at two games, first being UT2003.
We all know that UT2003 is a very graphically intense game, and
the guys at HardOCP created a test for both video cards and for
CPU performance. So lets see the results at 640*480.
We can see that results are pretty similar,
with the Crucial memory being about 2% faster at stock speeds,
with tighter timings, than the Corsair RAM. When overclocked
we again see the Crucial memory is only 2% faster than the Corsair
memory. Overclocking the memory provides a 18% increase
in performance, which isn't as high as the actual increase in
clock speed showing the effect that latency has on this game.
How though does the RAM fair in a very bandwidth hungry game,
in the Quake III engined based game Jedi Knight II.
We see that lowering the timings helps the
Crucial be 3% faster than the PC4000 memory. When overclocked
the difference between the two sticks of RAM is 2%, with the Corsair
having lower timings but the Crucial has a 11MHz faster FSB.
Overclocking the RAM gives you only an 13% increase in frame rate,
for the 30% increase in clock speed, though according to the bandwidth
results the increase should only be 7%.
NEXT
