DDR2 800MHz Roundup: A-Data, Kingston, & Mushkin

SuperPi Mod / Game Testing

Super PI Mod v1.4:

Super PI is a program a lot of enthusiasts use to benchmark overall system performance, as the program is capable of calculating pi up to 33.55 million digits on a timer. Many overclockers and enthusiasts are in a battle to get the lowest 1M Super Pi time possible.

Results: Super Pi Mod v1.4 shows a very slight performance increase with increased timings. Moving from timings of 5-5-5-15 to 5-3-3-8 yielded a modest increase in performance.

Comanche 4:

Flight simulations are notorious for their CPU-dependence, and this makes the Comanche 4 benchmark potentially a better CPU/subsystem test than it is for 3D video cards. Comanche 4 uses DX8.1 pixel/vertex shaders and was run at 640×480 32-bit with no audio.

Results: Comanche 4 seemed to like the tight timings on the Mushkin eXtreme memory, but was not even a full second faster than the other modules. A-DATA and Kingston performed equally and all the modules are no where near significantly different.

DOOM 3:

Results: Finally in Doom 3 we start to see a couple FPS difference between the modules. The Mushkin XP6400 memory modules with their tight timings took a two frame per second lead over Kingston and just under two FPS on A-DATA.

Let’s take a look at overclocking and then round up our final thoughts on these three PC2-6400 (800MHz) memory kits.