MSI KT6 Delta-FIS2R (KT600): Feature Packed Fun

MSI KT6 Delta-FIS2R: Stress Testing

We performed stress tests on the KT6 Delta-FIS2R in several different areas and configurations, including:

1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, which was conducted by running the FSB at 210MHz; and
2. Memory stress testing, which was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with one DIMM slot filled, and at 400MHz with all three DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

As standard practice, we ran a large load of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure the KT6 Delta-FIS2R was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. These stress tests included Prime95 torture tests, which were run in the background for a total of 24 hours.

In addition, we proceeded to run several other tasks, such as data compression, various DX8 games, and light apps like Word and Excel while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we re-ran our entire benchmark suite, which includes Sysmark 2002, Quake3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, Jedi Knight 2 and XMPEG. In the end, 210MHz FSB was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the KT6 Delta-FIS2R without encountering any reliability issues.

Memory Stress Test Results:

This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the KT6 Delta-FIS2R to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR), at the lowest supported memory timings that our Corsair TwinX LL modules officially support:

Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (1/3 banks populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Fast Command:	Fast
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	4-bank
RAS to CAS Delay:	2T
RAS Precharge:	6T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	1T

It’s not surprising to see the KT6 Delta-FIS2R achieve such low memory timings with just one memory module spec’ed at DDR400 running at 400MHz DDR. It is quite normal for any P4 or Athlon XP motherboard to achieve these aggressive performance settings. Thankfully, it looks as if KT600 motherboards will have no trouble achieving low memory latencies, as demonstrated in the next chart. We should mention that the KT6 Delta-FIS2R had a Fast Command option of Ultra that was not reliable during stress testing, which is why we could only achieve a Fast Command of "Fast" during our stress tests.

The following stress test is obviously a bit more strenuous on the memory subsystem than most memory stress tests, as it tests the rare occasion that a desktop user will install three DIMMs running 400MHz DDR at the most aggressive memory timings available in the BIOS:

Stable DDR400 Timings (3/3 banks populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Fast Command:	Normal
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	Disabled
RAS to CAS Delay:	3T
RAS Precharge:	6T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	1T

It is not unusual to see these lax timings for a strenuous memory subsystem test such as this. However, we have seen better, and so in this case, the KT6 Delta-FIS2R does not perform as well as most other current motherboards. Still, this seems to be the norm for KT600 motherboards. It’s worth reiterating that the real world performance difference between aggressive memory timings and relaxed memory timings, such as SPD, are very small. Therefore, unless you’re hell-bent on squeezing every last bit of performance from your system, SPD timings will work just fine 99% of the time.

We tested these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. We initiated the tests by running Prime95 torture tests; a grand total of 24 hours of Prime95 was successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. All three stress tests could not faze the KT6 Delta-FIS2R.