DDR3 On Core 2 Quad: Which Speed And Timings Are Best?
According to several motherboard companies, 2009 will be the year of the DDR3 breakthrough. Indeed, DDR3 memory prices are getting close to DDR2 levels. This article is the third in a series that analyzes different DDR3 memory speeds at various timings in an effort to find the best RAM configuration for your rig. Today we’ll look at the Intel Core 2 Quad.
Memory Scaling Testing on Other CPUs
This article looks at the system performance of a fast Core 2 Quad system using all possible memory speeds between DDR3-800 and DDR3-1600. We run each of the memory speeds at both relaxed and tight timings to find out whether more clock speed or quicker timings are preferable. As a reminder, we already performed the following DDR3 memory performance analyses:
DDR3 Memory Scaling on AMD’s Phenom II X4
Analysis of DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, DDR3-1333, and DDR3-1600 memory speeds using conservative and more aggressive timings on an AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz system.
Core i7 Memory Scaling: From DDR3-800 to DDR3-1600
Analysis of DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, DDR3-1333, and DDR3-1600 memory speeds using conservative and more aggressive timings on an Intel Core i7 Extreme 975 3.33 GHz system.
Memory Reviews
In addition, we’ve been looking at various memory offerings from the most popular vendors:
Life at 2 GT/s: 6 GB DDR3-2000 Memory Kits Compared
Triple Channel DDR3: 6 GB Kit Roundup
4 GB Gets Cheap: 9 Dual Channel Kits Compared
In order to match the memory capacity that we used for the other RAM scaling articles, we equipped our test system with a total of 6 GB RAM as well. We’ll conclude this article series with a little summary, which will compare the specific advantages of faster memory on all three platforms (AMD, Phenom II, Intel Core 2, Intel Core i7). But first, let’s look at Core 2 Quad memory scaling.
