Some interesting results come in this test, first looking at the actual FPS. First we see the 915P based board perform better than the 945P based board by 4.5%. Looking at the Asus board for the difference in memory bandwidth numbers, we see a 4% improvement by increasing the memory bus speed. This is even slightly better than the increase we get by doing a slight overclock and memory bandwidth increase. Looking at the CPU FPS we see that there is no difference between default memory speed and overclocked memory speed. The overclocking of the CPU makes a difference here as there is more time spent using the CPU.
Other Tests
We've seen the results we get from encoding video, lets see what we get when we do other tasks. First we will look at if there is much improvement given by increasing the memory bandwidth in office/multimedia applications, by looking at SysMark 2004.
| Sysmark 2004: |
ECS 915P-A DDRI: |
ECS 915P-A DDRII: |
Asus P5LD2-Deluxe DDRII: |
Asus P5LD2-Deluxe DDRII (800MHz): |
Asus P5LD2-Deluxe DDRII (700MHz): |
| 3D: |
178 |
179 |
176 |
179 |
182 |
| 2D: |
196 |
199 |
202 |
201 |
214 |
| Web: |
159 |
161 |
155 |
164 |
162 |
| Content: |
113 |
109 |
104 |
120 |
104 |
| Data: |
154 |
160 |
159 |
165 |
166 |
| Data Arranging: |
134 |
138 |
139 |
143 |
142 |
| Overall Internet: |
177 |
179 |
177 |
181 |
186 |
| Overall Office Productivity: |
133 |
135 |
134 |
142 |
137 |
| Overall: |
155 |
157 |
155 |
161 |
161 |
The results here are interesting. At face value the (slightly) overclocked system performs as well as the higher memory bus test system. Looking at the individual results we can see some interesting trends. Both the Web and Data Arranging tests show a slightly higher result from the higher memory clock test system than the overclocked one, which would seem to indicate that these two tests are more memory bandwidth limited than CPU limited. The only odd result is the Content portion of the test which shows a large improvement (15%) over the other Asus board results, but more in line with the DDRI test results. What do some games show in the way of performance with the 800MHz RAM?
First we will look at the older of our two test games, UT2004. This game offers good graphics, though they are 'slightly' dated compared to the newest games. However the fact that you can have a deathmatch with over 30 other players still means it is popular. This can make any game CPU/bandwidth limited so lets see how the 800MHz RAM does here.
We can see a just under 2% increase by just changing the memory clock speed, which is within our error margin. There is a far better increase that comes from overclocking the system 5%. Otherwise the difference between DDRI and DDRII is 3% which is a larger increase than a small overclock. How about Half Life II, which is a more graphically intense game, what is the average frame rate?
This test has a lot in common with the UT test. Overclocking the memory doesn't give the same performance boost as a slight FSB overclock and 100MHz lower memory clock speed. However overclocking the memory does give a 2.2% boost in frame rate over 533MHz memory.
Conclusion
We've seen all that this memory has to offer, from packaging to performance, so what can we conclude?
First the packaging of this RAM. As I mentioned in the previous review of the Crucial memory, there is nothing interesting about the packing, a plain cardboard box. This may help keep costs down, but doesn't do anything for the presentation of the product and its appeal. Apart from that the fact that the memory is packed separately in the same box is a little disconcerting, as it gives an indication that the RAM isn't an actual dual-channel kit, but just two sticks of same specification RAM put together.
As for performance, we can see that this memory only works at it's stock speed of 800MHz (QDR). This lack of overclockability is a little annoying, but may be due to the motherboard causing the error, or it just might be the RAM isn't overclockable in our case. Performance at its stock settings was okay, with most results being around the 2% performance increase range. The three tests that showed a difference from this mark were VirtualDub, TMPGEnc and Sysmark 2004. In the case of VirtualDub there was no difference, as this program is basically CPU bound in encoding DivX files. TMPGEnc seems to prefer as much memory bandwidth as it can access, with a 4% improvement in average real encoding speed. Lastly is SysMark 2004, which shows a 3.8% increase compared to stock speeds. This is due to three of the tests, Web, Content and Data; especially the first two tests mentioned.
Lastly is the price of the RAM, a rather large question especially since there isn't a lot of difference, performance wise to PC5300 RAM. As of this moment its around the mark, which puts it around the other PC6400 RAM around. The upside is that it has tighter timings than the competition, at least at the moment, at 4-4-4-15 rather than 5-5-5-15. Compared to the other Crucial RAM we looked at it is slightly cheaper and performs just as well, and works at 3-3-3-12 at most of the same clock speeds as the other memory.
Good Points
- 800MHz memory
- Fairly inexpensive
- Tighter timings than competition
Bad Points
- No major performance increase
- Poor packaging
- No overclocking (may be motherboard)
Final Words
If you are expecting the utmost in performance and overclocking the memory by putting this RAM in your system, it won't. However it does have tight timings for its clock speed ratings, and performs well for its price.
If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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