PC3200 DDR Memory Shootout

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For those of you that read my review of Geil's PC3500 you already know how I feel about the importance of using quality RAM. For the rest of you I don't care how good your motherboard, processor or cooling is your not going to be able to overclock much or maybe not even at all if you buy the generic cheap stuff. Only with the name brand stuff will you be able to get the kind of performance your looking for. So, now you may be asking yourself which brand of RAM will give you the best bang. Well today we look at three of the most talked about brands of memory out there and by the time you finish this article you might have an idea of which one will help you get those kick ass 3DMark2001 scores you crave.

PC3200 DDR Memory Shootout

 

Products:

• Corsair XMS3200v1.1 C2 256MB DDR-RAM

• GeIL PC3200 512MB DDR-RAM

• Xtreme DDR PC3200 256MB DDR-RAM

Written by: Chad (Memphist0)
Reviewed:  October, 2002
Edited by: Mack (SPeeD)

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Introduction
For those of you that read my review of Geil's PC3500 you already know how I feel about the importance of using quality RAM.  For the rest of you I don't care how good your motherboard, processor or cooling is your not going to be able to overclock much or maybe not even at all if you buy the generic cheap stuff.  Only with the name brand stuff will you be able to get the kind of performance your looking for.  So, know you may be asking yourself which brand of RAM will give you the best bang.  Well today we look at three of the most talked about brands of memory out there and by the time you finish this article you might have an idea of which one will help you get those kick ass 3DMark2001 scores you crave.

 

Overview
First off let's run down what the different speed ratings of DDR SDRAM mean.

• PC3500 = 433MHz DDR = 216.66MHz Memory Bus

• PC3200 = 400MHz DDR = 200.00MHz Memory Bus

• PC2700 = 333MHz DDR = 166.66MHz Memory Bus

• PC2400 = 300MHz DDR = 150.00MHz Memory Bus

• PC2100 = 266MHz DDR = 133.33MHz Memory Bus

• PC1600 = 200MHz DDR = 100.00MHz Memory Bus

I should also point out that only PC1600, PC2100, and PC2700 (the ones in bold) are currently certified by JEDEC.  Which is the reason Via and SiS have withdrawn their official support for 400MHz memory at the moment.  If a speed is not certified then compatibility issues can come up between the memory modules SPD and the motherboard's bios or chipset.  Something you should be aware before picking up a few new sticks of RAM.  Also, for those of you new to system building, just because you buy 400MHz memory doesn't mean it will automatically run at those speeds.  You must raise your front side bus, memory bus or change the CPU:Memory Ratio to increase the memory bus to 200MHz.  This will also overclock your processor unless you have an unlocked AMD CPU that you can lower the multiplier.  But of course most of us want to overclock our processor so this isn't a problem.

Test Setup

Hardware:

• Abit IT7 Max Mr. Natural's Tweaked Bios 9X

• Intel Pentium4 2.26B

• Enermax 465

• Swiftech MCX4000 with Vantec Tornado fan

• Maxtor 80GB ATA133 7,200rpm hard drive

• plenty of case cooling

Software:

• WindowsXP SP1 with all current updates

• SiSoft Sandra2002 with all current updates

• Seti-at-Home

• 3DMark2001SE Build 330

• Unreal Tournament 2003

• Battlefield 1942

Sandra was used to benchmark the performance of each stick of memory at its maximum speed, while Seti, 3DMark2001SE, UT2k3, and Battlefield 1942 were only used to test system stability.  Seti ran in the background while I looped the 3DMark2001SE benchmark, it was turned off while running UT2k3 and Battlefield 1942 for better in game performance ;)

All the maximum settings reported were run for at least 24 hours to guarantee stability.

Now on to the memory itself.

Next: PC3200 DDR Memory Shootout >>
 

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