4GB Trials and Tribulations

So far in our DDR1 testing, results have been quite congruent. 2T timings affects performance a lot, as is easily seen simply by eyeing a graph. Taking the stock speed results from Sciencemark, 2T results made a 21.4% difference! Talk about cutting an easy 1/5th of the performance straight out of your memory. Things got better at the top OC though. 2T there only was 20.8% slower ;)

Whew, this is depressing! Luckily, 2T didn’t seem to affect Super Pi results hardly at all. Our DDR2 results proved 1 second slower on average when moving to 4GB, and it’s pretty much the same situation here.

3D Mark 01 is very CPU intensive, but memory can also play a part, as you can see by the results. Overall, there’s been nothing more than really a 10% difference, which is fair compared to a few of the previous benchmark tests.

You may wonder why one result is blank. Please read the conclusion where I will tackle that issue more.

As with our DDR2 gaming tests, the same applies here. Results were recorded with FRAPS and were all manual play through’s. Half-Life 2 tests used the d1_canals_07 level, and BFII was the Dragon Valley.

Happily, moving on up to 2T timings didn’t really hurt the gaming results at all. Looking at the first HL2 result, there was a huge leap in overall FPS, but that could be due to different circumstances in that run-through. Overall though, 4GB didn’t hurt gaming at -all-, which is very reassuring after looking at the previous sets of results.

Ok! That was a LOT of benchmarking. I think I’m about ready for a conclusion!