Pushing Your DDR2 RAM To The Max

Synthetic

Summary And Conclusions : Small Benefits From Faster Clocks

But even if the clock rates that the AData and Corsair DIMMs attained are technically impressive, the performance results are far from awe-inspiring.

By and large, we are convinced that the step from DDR-533 to DDR2-667 makes sense when timing settings remain comfortably fast (Corsair). But DDR2-800 confers only minimal additional performance gains, and at DDR2-1066 the further reduction in timing settings provides little room for improvement. The price increases for these faster chips are proportionately much higher than the performance benefits they deliver.

For business applications, installing faster DDR2 DIMMs isn’t cost justifiable, and even gung-ho gamers will find that the extra money pays better dividends if invested in a high-end graphics card. Either way, we recommend a big name vendor, because they invest more in the testing and validation of new products.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.