What do the results show for us in this test?  This test seems to favor faster memory as moving to DDRII seems to provide a 4.5% increase in render speed and also is more efficient than the DDRI memory.  Moving to higher speeds we see a increase that is smaller than the increase in clock speed, showing higher DDRII speeds aren't as needed here.  Lets move to our other tests.

Other Tests

    First lets look at a complete office test, in Sysmark 2004.  While it does go through a very comprehensive test suite, I would like to see it move away from a score and rather look at time to complete tasks instead.  However it is still useful, so lets see if DDRII makes a difference.

    First is Half Life 2, a graphically nice game that takes advantage of system resources.  So lets see if bandwidth increases show any discernable difference.

    Interesting results from this test.  Moving to DDRII gives a 5% increase in frame rate in this non GPU limited test.  However overclocking the RAM doesn't show the same improvement, as the difference is 4.5%, less that the CPU speed increase, though some may be attributed to the RAM.  Can UT2004 show more of a difference?

    Again the move to DDRII nets a performance boost of 3% which is a small but real difference in this game.  Overclocking the RAM gives us the same result as Half Life 2, a 4.5% increase in frame rate.  So the games did show an increase because of DDRII but increasing the bandwidth beyond that point provides little in return.  The results are much like that of ScienceMarks' Membench test.

Conclusion

    We've seen the RAM, seen its performance, and seen its overclockability, so what can we conclude?

    The packaging of this RAM isn't anything to take your breath away, as it follows Crucial's minimalist thinking while still protecting the memory.  The actual sticks of RAM aren't in the same packaging inside the box, which is more of a small aesthetic touch than anything else.  Otherwise the RAM is covered in a gold colored aluminum heatsink, which does get rather warm when in use.

    Overclocking was adequate with the RAM going to its rated speed of 667MHz at low timings, but only making it up to 700MHz at most, though it did it at the same timings.  Whether this is a matter of the motherboard not being able to go faster we will see soon, but still the results were okay for this RAM.

    Performance takes a few forms.  If your are a fan of synthetic memory tests than this RAM is significantly better that DDRI and overclocking helps quite a bit.  However most of us don't run these tests continuously so we look to the real world results.  For the most part there is no significant increase due to DDRII memory.  The exceptions are TMPGEnc which shows a 4.5% increase by moving to DDRII, and the game tests which show a 3-5% increase in frame rate (3-4fps) also by moving to DDRII. 

    Price is always an issue and Crucial usually provides a very reasonable price on their RAM, regardless of the type.  Its main competitor is that of Corsair's PC25400UL kit, but that retails for above $250 (US) at the time of writing.  Crucial's kit as reviewed retails for about $211 (US) which is significantly cheaper and is backed by their great warranty.

Pros: Low latency, lifetime warranty, decent performance, well priced.

Cons: Average overclocker which was reflected in the performance.

Bottom Line: This is a solid memory kit that provides low latency at higher clock speeds.  The only downside is that the higher clock speeds don't do much on their own so overclocking the CPU is needed here.

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