Overclocking:
The first goal when overclocking was to determine the maximum stable memory speed that could be achieved with both the Crucial and Super Talent memory packages with more aggressive timings (4-4-4-12). Both packages were stable at and below 1075MHz (4-4-4-12) so benchmarks for both the Crucial Ballistix and Super Talent memory kits were taken at this point.
Testing was also conducted to verify the maximum speeds attainable at stock (5-5-5-15) timings. As expected, the relaxed timings helped both memory kits achieve higher stable clock speeds. The Crucial memory reached 1185MHz before signs of system instability were noted. The Super Talent memory faired slightly better reaching 1200MHz before errors were generated in MemTest86. However, as the benchmarks will reveal, raw clock speeds do not necessarily result in better system performance.
Benchmarking:
The Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 2GB DDR2 Memory Kit was benchmarked against a similarly clocked 2x1GB kit from Super Talent previously reviewed at BigBruin. To make things fair, both memory packages were tested with the same system FSB speed of 1525MHz. Then timings and clock speeds were varied for each respective test. A summary of test results is listed below:
» Crucial @ 1066MHz (5-5-5-15), stock settings
» Crucial @ 1075MHz (4-4-4-12), highest stable clock at (4-4-4-12)
» Crucial @ 1185MHz (5-5-5-15), highest stable clock at (5-5-5-15)
» Super Talent @ 1000MHz (5-5-5-15), stock settings
» Super Talent @ 1075MHz (4-4-4-12), highest stable clock at (4-4-4-12)
» Super Talent @ 1200MHz (5-5-5-15), highest stable clock at (5-5-5-15)
The following software was used to benchmark the test system:
»
Everest Home Edition (v2.20)
»
SiSoft Sandra 2007 Lite XI SP1 (v11.22)
»
3DMark 2006
»
PC Wizard 2007
Everest Home:
Everest Home Edition is a software suite that includes free system benchmarking tools. The results below give the read and write speeds (in MB/s) for the respective memory manufacturers. The chart below makes it quite clear that the Crucial Ballistix memory outperforms the previously reviewed Super Talent memory. As we would expect tighter timings gave the best overclocked performance. The results reveal the Crucial Ballistix performs 40% better than the Super Talent memory kit.
Everest also demonstrates a slight increase in performance can be realized by overclocking the Crucial Ballistix memory kit. Read and write speeds improved by nearly 5% when overclocked. This differs from the Super Talent memory, which regardless of clock speed or latency essentially performed the same.
