The Return of 2-2-2: Corsair 3200XL & Samsung PC4000
by Wesley Fink on June 15, 2004 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Intel Test Results: Samsung PC4000
| Samsung PC4000 (DDR500) - 2 x 256Mb Single-Sided | |||||
| Speed | Memory Timings & Voltage | Quake3 fps | Sandra UNBuffered | Sandra Standard Buffered | Super PI 2M places (time in sec) |
| 400DDR 800FSB |
2-2-2-5 2.5VV |
323.4 | INT 2700 FLT 2738 |
INT 4509 FLT 4506 |
131 |
| 433DDR 866FSB |
2-2-3-5 2.65V |
344.7 | INT 2775 FLT 2825 |
INT 4835 FLT 4837 |
122 |
| 466DDR 933FSB |
2-3-3-6 2.65V |
365.6 | INT 2853 FLT 2880 |
INT 5163 FLT 5163 |
115 |
| 500DDR 1000FSB |
3-3-3-7 2.75V |
383.1 | INT 2961 FLT 3029 |
INT 5450 FLT 55449 |
109 |
| 506DDR 1048FSB |
3-4-4-7 2.85V |
- | - | - | - |
Since the Samsung PC4000 is using the same memory chips as the Corsair 3200XL, the lower performance has to be attributed to other factors. Corsair is using a different PCB and different SPD timings, which improve the Corsair performance. In addition, 2 single-sided DIMMs perform poorer than 2 double-sided DIMMs on the Intel platform, which is even stated in Intel white papers. Third, 512MB in 2 DIMMs is not as fast in some benchmarks as 1GB in 2 DIMMs.
The Samsung results should not be considered as a fair performance comparison. Rather, the results clearly demonstrate the penalty of 2 single-sided versus 2 double-sided DIMMs on an Intel test bed. Credit should also be given to Corsair for the excellent quality of their PCB and SPD design used on 3200XL.
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Pumpkinierre - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Good article again, Wesley. Pity its not DDR500 at 2-2-2. I'm still holding off upgrading. I wouldnt trust that VIA chipset with the Corsair RAM. Plenty of people run their memory outside SPD specs withot problems. And don't give up on the i875 yet. There's a lot of issues with DDR2 and 915/925. I notice that ABIT have brought out a Sckt775 865 mobo. Hmm I wonder why?Also the P4/i875 seems to equal or better the S939 a64 in unbuffered sandra which I wouldnt have expected because of the on die a64 mem. controller etc.. Then in the buffered test the a64 clearly gets the upper hand which again is a suprise as many of the buffers are associated with MMX/SSE/SSE2 where the a64s are supposed to be weaker. I only trust the unbufferd tests but this may explain the fact that the FX chips beat the P4s on memory bandwidth but were behind on the bandwidth intensive encoding tests.
In the one test (Samsung mem.) where you test the a64 at different bus speeds (200&240MHz), the gaming results were equal or worse in the game tests despite an ~85 increase in mem. bandwidth ! Unfortunately you had different memory timings but it reinforces the importance of latency reduction rather than bandwidth for gaming performance.