Golden Dragon PC3200 DC - Golden Dragon PC3200 DC

Testing

I tested the RAM for compatibility on an ABIT IS7 (Springdale), ABIT IC7-G (Canterwood), and the Albatron KM18G Pro (nForce2) motherboards. The RAM functioned on all chipsets without problems. The benchmarks I show below were taken from the ABIT IS7. Additional equipment included a Pentium IV 2.4C capable of running at up to 292 MHz front side bus, a RADEON 9700 PRO, Western Digital 80GB 7,200 RPM 8MB cache hard drive, and an Enermax EG465P power supply.

Test Software

• Memtest86 v3.0

• SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark OCA Edition

• 3DMark 2001 Build 330

• 3DMark 2003 Build 320

• Comanche4 Benchmark

• Aquamark3 v2.3

I was able to run the Golden Dragon PC3200 Dual Channel at 280MHz front side bus with a 5:4 CPU:Memory ratio CAS 2.5-7-4-4 Game Accelerator set to Auto and at 293MHz front side bus with a 3:2 CPU:Memory ratio CAS 2-6-3-3 and Game Accelerator set to Street Racer. I could not run this memory at the F1 Game Accelerator setting or at CAS 2-5-2-2 even at the default 200MHz bus speed. These settings were verified stable with Memtest86 v3.0.

To sum up tests were run at:

• CPU 3.5GHz, Memory 195.3MHz (390.6MHz DDR)

• CPU 3.36GHz, Memory 224MHz (448MHz DDR)

SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark OCA Edition

As expected the 280MHz/5:4 setting bested the 293/3:2 setting. As this is primarily a memory benchmark the faster CPU speed at 293 couldn't make up for its lower memory bus.

3DMark 2001 Build 330

3DMark2001 while being a video card benchmark has always been known to benefit from higher front side bus speeds, not to mention higher CPU speeds. Here we see that the higher CPU speed beats the higher memory bandwidth.

3DMark 2003 Build 320

Now we see that the latest version of 3DMark is less dependent on system differences and is more of a pure video card benchmark. While the higher CPU speed did win this one the difference was less than a tenth of a percent.

Comanche4 Benchmark

Finally we get into some real game benchmarks. Comanche4 does however support what we saw with the 3DMark tests, CPU speed again beats out the higher memory bandwidth.

Aquamark3 v2.3

Aquamark3 is another real game benchmark but is more video card intensive than Comanche4. We still see the higher CPU speed wining but only but about 2% over the higher bandwidth settings.

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