Crucial Ballistix 8GB DDR3 2000MHz CL9 Memory Kit Review

Synthetic bandwidth: Sandra & AIDA64

SiSoftware Sandra

Synthetic benchmarks like Sandra and AIDA64 are often the most obvious ways to demonstrate the increased bandwidth using faster memory allows. We will start our testing with Sandra. SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility that works on either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003/R2, and Server 2008/R2. Sandra takes advantage of multiple CPUs and CPU cores, Hyperthreading, advanced CPU instruction sets like SSE 4.2, NUMA, and 64-bit extensions. Sandra includes benchmarks for system memory as well as CPU, GPU, APU (simultaneous CPU+GPU), and GPGPU benchmarks. However, perhaps Sandras greatest strength is that it remains one of the most popular tests used to benchmark memory bandwidth and latency, and we are using the latest 2011 version to perform these benchmarks.

Compared to our baseline kit, the BallistiX BL2KIT51264FN2001 runs at a 16.6% faster clock speed, but with slightly looser timings. This translates into nice gains in both bandwidth and latency.

AIDA64

In late 2010 Finalwire acquired the software known as EVEREST from Lavalys and changed the name to AIDA64. AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a diagnostic and benchmarking tool that offers comprehensive system monitoring of data such as CPU, motherboard, hard drive, and GPU temperatures and voltages as well as CPU and memory benchmarks and system stress testing utilities that are useful for diagnosing stability issues or ensuring a system overclock is stable.

We are using version 1.80.1450 to measure the memory latency, read, and write speeds.

Again, AIDA64s synthetic memory tests show impressive gains compared to our baseline 1600MHz HyperX kit. Lets see if those synthetic advantages translate into real-world performance benefits.