Test Setup

Designed specifically to get the greatest features and best performance for its price, the following mid-budget system formed the basis for this "bang for the buck" memory comparison.

Dropping the CPU multiplier to 6x and using a 2:1 DRAM:CPU bus clock ratio permitted ultra-high memory clock rates at speeds that would have otherwise rendered this system a smoking pile of rubbish. The performance impact will be felt equally at all speeds, making the bandwidth numbers not comparable to other articles, but perfectly proportional with respect to each other.

This Automatic Configuration Data chart shows SPD values detected by CPU-Z version 1.38, as well as those detected by the Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi/AP edition motherboard.

Nine memory kits defaulted to 5-5-5 timings for easy booting, settings which further assured the maximum clock speed during these tests. Manually dropping the Buffalo FireStix to 5-5-5-18 kept this competition fair, but any attempt to loosen OCZ Gold GX XTC Revision 2 or Wintec AMPX C5 tRAS to 18 cycles resulted in a boot failure. The later used default SPD timings of 5-5-5-15 and 5-5-5-16, respectively.