Live Memory Test: Overclock 'Em Till They Crash

The Memory Gigahertz Race: A-Data vs. Corsair at DDR2-1000

You are invited to follow an unprecedented live Gigahertz race until Sunday as we drive both the A-Data and the Corsair DDR2-1000 memory as far as they can go. Both are high-end products that are specified for 500 MHz operation. We believe it is a good shootout to conclude our live memory stress test, although both are review samples that were not bought in retail. We commenced at 333 MHz base memory clock (DDR2-667) and will increase the clock speed incrementally.

At the same time we want to apologize for not being able to run the stress test with Mushkin’s memory. We accidentally bought two 512 MB DIMMs instead of a pair of 1 GB modules, and the replacement could not be at our Munich lab in time.

We confront A-Data’s DDR2-1000 memory (M2OEL6F3H4170A1E0Z)...

... with Corsair’s DDR2-1000 (CMSX512-8000UL XMS8005v1.1). This part has been discontinued and replaced by a PC8500 model.

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