Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 (DDR2-1066/PC2-8500) 2 GB Memory Kit Review
Memory Bandwidth
Contents
We measured memory bandwidth with Sandra Lite 2007. Memory bandwidth, also known as transfer rate, is measured in MB/s. The methodology we used you can check in the previous page.
The results you can see on the chart and table below. On the table we included the maximum theoretical transfer rate for all DDR2 standards, both single channel and dual channel. As you can see, even though the reviewed memory kit achieved the best transfer rate among the selected memory modules, it is far from the maximum theoretical transfer rate. This is normal to occur with Intel CPUs, where the memory controller isn’t embedded in the CPU but located on the motherboard north bridge chip.
| Memory Module | Transfer Rate (MB/s) | Difference |
| DDR2-1066 Dual Channel Max. Theoretical | 17,056 | 201.34% |
| DDR2-800 Dual Channel Max. Theoretical | 12,800 | 126.15% |
| DDR2-667 Dual Channel Max. Theoretical | 10,672 | 88.55% |
| DDR2-1066 Single Channel Max. Theoretical | 8,528 | 50.67% |
| DDR2-533 Dual Channel Max. Theoretical | 8,192 | 44.73% |
| DDR2-800 Single Channel Max. Theoretical | 6,400 | 13.07% |
| Corsair CM2X1024-8500C5 (DDR2-1066) | 5,660 | |
| DDR2-667 Single Channel Max. Theoretical | 5,336 | 6.07% |
| DDR2-800 Simulation | 5,281 | 7.18% |
| Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 (DDR2-800) | 5,280 | 7.20% |
| DDR2-667 Simulation | 5,137 | 10.18% |
| Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL (DDR2-667) | 5,106 | 10.85% |
| Corsair CM2X512-4200 (DDR2-533) | 4,887 | 15.82% |
| DDR2-533 Simulation | 4,886 | 15.84% |
| DDR2-533 Single Channel Max. Theoretical | 4,264 | 32.74% |
You should keep in mind that a higher memory transfer rate does not necessarily translates into a higher system overall performance.