X-bit labs

DDR3-1600 SDRAM: Technological Breakthrough or Marketing Trick? (page 5)

Category: Memory

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 08/21/2007 | 06:54 PM ]

Testbed and Methods

Now that we have discussed in detail our testing participants – the new overclocker DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600 memory kits – it is high time we turned to discussing their practical performance in different real applications. Will the above described solutions be able to offer us a higher level of performance than the DDR2 SDRAM modules? – This is the primary question we need to answer by the end of our test session.

As we have already said before, we can only test DDR3-1600 in overclocked Intel P35 Express based systems with FSB running at increased frequency (so far this is the only chipset supporting DDR3 SDRAM). For our test session we set the FSB at 400MHz. With different dividers this configuration allows setting the memory frequency at 1000, 1200, 1333 and 1600MHz, which will do just fine for our comparison of DDR2 and DDR3 memory subsystems performance. So, the test processor was overclocked to 3.6GHz obtained as 9 x 400MHz. We tested DDR3 SDRAM in the above described system based on Asus Blitz Extreme mainboard. The DDR2 SDRAM performance was measured in a similar system built on Asus P5K Deluxe mainboard. We compared the performance of DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600 against that of overclocker DDR2-1000 SDRAM working with 4-4-4-12 timings and DDR2-1200 SDRAM with 5-5-5-15 timings.

The complete list of memory modules that took part in our test session is provided in the table below together with the links to screenshots from diagnostic utilities showing all the timings settings, including the secondary ones. Note that all secondary parameter settings were left in Auto on purpose.

As for other components that we used during our tests, here is the list for your reference:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, overclocked to 3.6GHz (9 x 400MHz).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS P5K Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35, DDR2 SDRAM);
• ASUS Blitz Extreme (LGA775, Intel P35, DDR3 SDRAM).
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX.
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• PSU: SilverStone SST-ST85ZF (850W).
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x86.