More Speed = More Performance? Fast DDR Memory from TwinMOS and Buffalo Technology Put to the Test

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Test Setup

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Test System
ProcessorAMD Athlon XP3000+ (Barton)512 kB L2-Cache
MotherboardMSI K7N2nVIDIA nForce2 Chipsatz
RAM2x 256 MB PC3700 TwinMOS2x 512 MB PC3700 Buffalo Tech.2x 256 MB PC3500 Corsair CMX512-3500C2
IDE Controlleri845E UltraDMA/100 controller (ICH4)
Display AdapterNVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600,128 MB
Network Card3COM 905TX PCI 100 MBit
Operating SystemWindows XP Pro 5.10.2600 Service Pack 1
Benchmarks and Tests
Quake III Arena640x480x16
Unreal Tournament 2003640x480x32
Comanche 4640x480x16
3Dmark 2003Default Settings
Lame 3.92MP3 Encoding174 MB WAV-File
Divx 5.04 / XmpegMPEG-4 Encoding XMPEG 5.0 Beta Divx 5.04
SYSmark 2002Internet Content Creation Office Productivity
Lightwave 7.5Skull Benchmark Scene
SPECviewperf 7.1All Benchmarks
File CompressionWinACE 2.11
SiSoft Sandra 2003 ProMemory Bandwidth Benchmark
PC Mark 2002Memory Benchmark
Drivers and Settings
Graphics DriverNVIDIA reference driver 43.45
DriversnVIDIA Unified Driver 2.03Audio driver 3.17 (WHQL)Audio utilities 3.17Network driver 3.13 (WHQL)GART driver 2.78 (WHQL)SMBus driver 2.75 (WHQL)Memory controller driver 2.75 (WHQL)IDE driver 2.70 In The Box (WHQL)
DirectX Version9.0a
Resolution1024x768, 16 bit, 85 Hz refresh

The memory timings used are also important for this test :

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Memory ClockTimings
266 MHzT-RAS : 5T-RCD : 2T-RP : 2CAS Latency : 2.0
333 MHzT-RAS : 5T-RCD : 2T-RP : 2CAS Latency : 2.0 (Buffalo Tech only 2.5)
400 MHzT-RAS : 6T-RCD : 3 (2 only possible with Corsair memory)T-RP : 3 (2 only possible with Corsair memory) CAS Latency : 2.0 (only possible with Corsair memory)
444 MHzT-RAS : 7At 444 MHz, the Corsair module can also handle an RAS timing of six clock cycles. In practice, this does not run stably and very little gain in performance can be expected, therefore we measured with seven clock cycles.T-RCD : 3T-RP : 3CAS Latency : 2.5
Patrick Schmid
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.