Benchmarking at The Maximum Clock Rate
Contents
We lowered the clock multiplier of our Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2 GHz) from 11x to 8x and increased its memory bus from 200 MHz to 275 MHz, making the memories to run at DDR550 keeping the CPU running internally at 2.2 GHz. The reviewed memory modules from OCZ were the only ones that worked under this configuration. So we included the results achieved under this configuration together with our maximum clock rate results.
The maximum clock rate test is exactly what it says: the higher clock rate we could achieve with the module being tested. On the results we included memory voltage, memory clock, CPU clock multiplier and CPU internal clock that were used to achieve the posted results.
Sandra Lite 2005.SR3 10.69
We used the Memory Bandwidth Benchmark module from Sandra to measure the maximum transfer rate that the memory was able to achieve. The result published is an arithmetic average from the Buffered Integer Stream and Buffered Float Stream results.
You can check the results on the graph below.
| Memories – Maximum Clock Rate | Sandra – média – Int e Float | % |
| Patriot PDC2G3500LLK (3-4-3-7) – 2.8 V – 270 MHz x 9 – 2.43 GHz | 6734 | +3.98 |
| Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 260 MHz x 9 – 2.34 GHz | 6281 | |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-4-8) – 2.8 V – 280 MHz x 8 – 2.24 GHz | 6281 | -3.10 |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 275 MHz x 8 – 2.2 GHz | 6160 | -5.13 |
Since under this test the CPU clock varied according to the memory module being reviewed, it isn’t fair to make direct comparisons using the published results. Anyway, you can have an idea of the maximum clock rate you can achieve with each memory module included in our tests and also it is a good opportunity to see how a higher clock does not necessarily translates into a higher performance because of the latencies used.
Not taking the performance data into account, the reviewed memory modules by Corsair achieved the lowest clock rate among the memory modules we included in our review – including the Patriot ones, which also use memory chips from Infineon.
3DMark2001 SE Build 3.3.0
3DMark2001 SE simulates older games based on DirectX 8.1 and it is very sensitive to changes in the hardware configuration of the system.
You can check the results on the graph below.
| Memories – Maximum Clock Rate | 3DMark2001 SE (Build3.3.0) | % |
| Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 260 MHz x 9 – 2.34 GHz | 23390 | |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-4-8) – 2.8 V – 280 MHz x 8 – 2.24 GHz | 23209 | -0.78 |
| Patriot PDC2G3500LLK (3-4-3-7) – 2.8 V – 270 MHz x 9 – 2.43 GHz | 23200 | -0.82 |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 275 MHz x 8 – 2.2 GHz | 23077 | -1.36 |
On 3DMark2001 SE all tested memories achieved the same performance level, even though different CPU clocks were used.
Quake III Arena 1.32
Even though this is an old game its importance comes from the fact its engine is used by several other games, like Jedi Knight II and Medal of Honor, and also because this game is very sensitive to any changes on the hardware configuration.
We used the demo four available on version 1.32 of Quake III to make our benchmarking with this game. We ran this demo three times at 1024x768x32 resolution and all image quality settings on their default configuration and we picked the middle value for our comparisons, i.e., we discarded the highest and the lowest values.
Check the results below.
| Memories – Maximum Clock Rate | Quake III Arena – FPS | % |
| Patriot PDC2G3500LLK (3-4-3-7) – 2.8 V – 270 MHz x 9 – 2.43 GHz | 505.8 | +4.70 |
| Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 260 MHz x 9 – 2.34 GHz | 483.1 | |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-4-8) – 2.8 V – 280 MHz x 8 – 2.24 GHz | 471.9 | -2.37 |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 275 MHz x 8 – 2.2 GHz | 467.8 | -3.27 |
Since under this test the CPU clock varied according to the memory module being reviewed, it isn’t fair to make direct comparisons using the published results. Anyway, you can have an idea of the maximum clock rate you can achieve with each memory module included in our tests. The reviewed memory kit from Corsair presented the lowest overclocking potential among the memory modules included in our review.
Super Pi Mod 1.4
Super Pi is a benchmarking software created at Tokyo University which measures the time spent to calculate Pi up to 32 million decimal places. In our tests we calculated Pi with 1 million decimal places.
Check the results below.
| Memories – Maximum Clock Rate | Super Pi Mod 1.4 | % |
| Patriot PDC2G3500LLK (3-4-3-7) – 2.8 V – 270 MHz x 9 – 2.43 GHz | 35 | -4.36 |
| Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO (3-4-3-8) – 2,8 V – 260 MHz x 9 – 2.34 GHz | 36.594 | |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-4-8) – 2.8 V – 280 MHz x 8 – 2.24 GHz | 37.672 | +2.86 |
| OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC (3-4-3-8) – 2.8 V – 275 MHz x 8 – 2.2 GHz | 38.172 | +4.13 |
Since under this test the CPU clock varied according to the memory module being reviewed, it isn’t fair to make direct comparisons using the published results. Anyway, you can have an idea of the maximum clock rate you can achieve with each memory module included in our tests and how the increase on the clock rate reflects on the system performance.
