What's better than fast memory? Right, even faster memory! Corsair's latest toys run 1,250 MHz to satisfy the performance hunger of the most demanding enthusiasts - if you can fork out the $600.

You tested more processor power in comparison to faster, bleeding edge memory. What happens to the benchmarks if you take the $600 premium on the fastest memory money can buy and instead buy 4GB of DDR800? That might be just as enlightening as the test run for a processor bump, and would be the cheapest solution of all.

I have to disagree with the conclusion a bit. What IF you want to run the memory at 1:1 with the FSB, and reduce the timings as much as possible ? Since I don't currently own a C2D system, I have no experience here, but in my mind, this would produce the best overall system speed. Granted, it's not going to be a huge perceivable difference . . .

There are ram kits out for half the price that offer about the same performance, such as this $300 G.Skill kit, it uses d9gkx IC, and people have gotten them to cas3 1000mhz with reasonable voltage like you could on the xms 6400c3 (not dominator) with d9gkx ICs, all the dominator's now use d9mgh, which isn't as good, but not bad either if highly binned
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231075

Not very well known ram due to corsair covering up G.Skill by releasing their dominator series with insane prices, the dominator hs should add to the cost something like $5, not make their 1066 ram with basic timings a hell of a lot more than regular 1066 ram

Two different processors??

The whole review is invalid...

what?

We're not even talking about cpu's here, this is memory 8O

The two processors was to show performance differences between a memory upgrade and a CPU upgrade. This review would have been more useful if it included more memory options, like CAS 3 offerings, but it made a very good point of showing that simply increasing the mem speed has no real impact on performance, especially for the price that you have to pay to get an extra 100 Mhz out of your RAM.

Was this conclusion written on a totally different article?
Where is this so called "domination"?

but the problem is plenty of newbs buy memory rated for extreme speeds, but end up running it at much lower speeds anyway due to 1:1 for ocing

I didn't see anything in the review that really showed an increase in performance. What's the point of paying twice as much for 1250 MHz RAM when the speed difference is negligible, at best?

Exactly, that's why I suggest getting that $200 G.skill, or some $300 crucial 1000mhz ram, because you won't see much of a performance increase anyway, there will be other bottlenecks here and there. Plus if you overclock, you'll running your memory slower than 1000mhz in most cases anyway (intel cpus only, amd ones can utilize up to 1240mhz due to the integrated memory controller, so the performance isn't any difference from 1:1 to 7:020935729345)

This has convinced me to buy a better processor before I buy faster memory. 1 second less or .5 fps more doesn't really seem to shine when you think about $600.00 down the tube.
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Yes that what I recommend, for gaming, get yourself something like an e4300 with a nice water cooler and an 8800gtx combined with either some value memory, or if you must, some of the memory I mentioned earlier. That way once you oc that w/c 4300 to beyoned 4ghz, then you won't bottleneck your 8800gtx as much as try to

Umm.. I was speaking hypothetically. I'm too poor to buy a new computer. I did, however, just double the amount of RAM in my laptop to 512 though, which is a nice jump for 45$.
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used to be that you could buy a gig for less than $80 just a year ago...

Anyway, vote here on how you feel on the new frontpage
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/com [...] 204#453204

See, you're kind of negating your own points. WHY buy a $400 water cooling setup, when you can spend that $400 on a better CPU, and use air to get much beter speeds, hell you dont even need to spend $400, you only need to spend about another $100-$200. Also, if you decide not to OC, you still have a much better CPU.

There is a reason for OCing, but spending that money otherwise saved, on a $400 water cooling kit, does NOT makes sense.

yeah, to my eyes, the Dominator got ROCKED by the DD2-800, in almost every benchmark. they were probably paid to put that statement in by corsair

water cooler don't cost $400 though, you can build a custom loop for around $250 or so, which is still cheaper to go than getting the e6700, and a 4300 at above 4ghz should pwn anything on the market right now


Also, the reason why the 10000 memory sucked was because of the horrible timings, as for the 1111, I was surprised that got pwned. So I guess we all know now to just buy the original xms2 6400c3 with d9gkx, oc that to ddr2-1000 with 3-4-3-9 and get the best performance ever

This purely for luxury, as we can see the benchmark don't have a great advantage over 800Mhz module. My 533Mhz are still rocking. But I'd sure get this 1250's if I got some $600 to spare. No doubt the best for overclocking.

yeah, but there's some ocz ram that can run above 1300mhz with the same timings for roughly $200 less, I'd get a better cpu or water cooler for the difference between the two ram (also the ocz has a build in water block)

Not at Radioshack, where they let you try the RAM before you buy it. I always shop local if I can.
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