Corsair Dominator PC2-10000: Fastest DDR2

Game Performance Comparison

Real-world benchmarks - specifically gaming benchmarks - provide the most useful measure of memory performance if you keep in mind what they represent. Memory is just one small part of overall gaming performance, and the AnandTech benchmarks keep everything the same except memory speed. Even the CPU speed is kept constant except in the overclocking tests. As a result performance improvements in FPS are very small because the only factor influencing the test results is memory speed. Many factors affect system performance, and memory speed is just one of those factors.

Since results for high-end memory were so close at all tested speeds, the scale range was reduced to better show the small differences in these memory benchmark results. Please keep this in mind when viewing the charts, since a normal zero scale would make performance differences appear much smaller than these expanded scale charts. Test values for memory at each speed are included below each chart for reference.

The AT memory test suite uses Far Cry, Half Life 2 and Quake 4 for memory testing because they are sensitive to memory performance.




Despite the fact that memory is varying from 3-2-2-6 timings at DDR2-400 all the way to 5-5-5-18 timings at DDR2-1067 all three games continue to show improvement in frame rates as memory speed increases. Put another way, performance continues to improve as memory speed increases. This is the best evidence you will find to prove that increasing memory speed does increase performance - even to DDR2-1067 and beyond.

Corsair Dominator 10000 provided a mixed bag of gaming performance. It was average compared to other top enthusiast memory in Quake 4, one of the fastest we have tested in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, and one of the slowest of the performance memories in Far Cry. These mixed results appear to be related to the SPD programming used to achieve very high memory speeds with lower latency. They are also likely a reflection of the fact that game tests were run on the 975X motherboard, which is clearly not the best match for Corsair Dominator 10000.

Performance was much more predictable on the NVIDIA 680i motherboard, as Corsair told us it would be. If you plan to buy Dominator 10000 pair it with a 680i or recent P965 board and you will get the best results from this memory. The memory performance on the ASUS P5W-DH (975X) is certainly quite good and competitive, but it does not stand out on this platform.