Conclusion
If you’ve checked out the benchmark section you will now know that the new PC10000 Corsair Dominator memory indeed dominates many of the benchmark results. It is faster than the DDR2-800 memory and it outperforms the DDR2-1066 setup as well. The benefit over our DDR2-1066 setup is little, as the latter can operate at quicker memory parameters (see test setup). One might criticize that we didn’t compare the three performance grades 800/1066/1250 at the same timing settings, but we don’t believe that any enthusiast would want to operate her or his RAM at slower parameters than necessary.
It doesn’t come as a surprise, but Corsair’s Dominator climbs up the ladder to the very top : Although it can only run at relaxed timings, it is the best performing enthusiast memory one can get. It’s Enhanced Performance Profile and Dual-Path Heat Exchange features are very much unique and both make a lot of sense to us.
Dominator PC10000 is, however, the most expensive 2x 1 GB memory product as well, and the performance advantage over DDR2-1066 and even over DDR2-800 is small. We consider it even small enough to question whether it makes sense to go for highest-end enthusiast memory at all. On the one hand there is Intel’s Core 2 Duo, whose huge 4 MB L2 cache is efficient enough to level differences between conventional RAM and enthusiast memory. Most people will never notice that there is a performance difference at all unless we extended the benchmark duration from minutes to hours per workload. In such cases, the faster memory might help you to save a few minutes. Yet we doubt that anyone waiting for a huge workload actually waits for it complete. In times of dual and quad core processors, there is always something you can do at the same time. On the other hand, it clearly makes more sense to purchase conventional memory and invest the extra money into a faster processor. Our Core 2 at 2.93 GHz and DDR2-800 RAM outperformed the Core 2 at 2.66 GHz in every real-life benchmark ; no matter what memory we used.
The conclusion hence it easy : It only makes sense to purchase Corsair’s PC10000 Dominator memory for $ 600 Compare Prices on Corsair’s PC10000 if you’ve already purchased the fastest processor, the fastest platform, the fastest hard drive setup and the fastest graphics subsystem you can get for money. Everyone else is better off spending their money on components that have larger impact on performance than memory.
