Test Setup

Test System
CPU:	Intel E6300 Conroe 1.8 GHz, 2 MB Cache
Motherboard:	ASUS P5B Deluxe BIOS 1004 Intel P965 C1
Video Card:	PowerColor X800XL Pro 16 PCI-E
Harddisk:	Samsung P80 80 GB
Power Supply:	Ultra V-Power 450W
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 7.6

Performance & Overclocking

The first thing done, when testing this memory is simply running it at the rated speed. A-DATA does not state an operational voltage at the rated speed of 1200 MHz. So I went ahead and tried 2.4V as this is what most such modules used. It worked flawlessly right away at this speed. Then I kept lowering the voltage while keeping the same speed and CL rating. Imagine my surprise when I set the memory to "Auto" in the BIOS and it worked without any problems. This theme continues at all CL settings. A-DATA has created memory which does not budge much at all. Nonetheless, the A-DATA offering is the first memory to manage 1200 MHz at default voltage. As this is the 1 GB kit, you may need to use more voltage.


After my amazement settled down, I used CPU-Z to check what the memory was programmed to run at. As you can see above, it may be set to 1402 MHz at very slow timings. The P5B Deluxe does not offer such slow settings and even when setting them to the highest possible values and 2.45V it did not budge much at all.

The next step meant setting the memory to 533 MHz and default voltage to see what timings the memory was capable of. It did not manage 3-2-2-4, no matter how much voltage was applied, but worked flawlessly with 3-3-3-4 at default voltage. The maximum speed difference between default and 2.45V is a mere 4 MHz and this is once again what we have seen at 1200 MHz. The same goes for CL4-4-4-8 with which I managed 382 MHz, with once again just a few MHz improvement with highest voltage settings. Relaxing the timings just a tad to CL4-4-4-12 suddenly resulted in a large jump, past the DDR2 800 MHz mark to 920 MHz. Once again, chainging the voltage is quite useless for this memory.

A-DATA DDR2 1200+ MHz 1 GB Kit
CPU Clock & Memory Ratio	Memory Speed	Memory Timings	Everest Read	Everest Write	Everest Latency	Quake 3 Timedemo	3DMark 2001SE	SuperPi Mod 1M
7 x 311 1:2	622 MHz	5-5-5-15 2.45V	8376 MB/s	5657 MB/s	56.1 ns	430.2 fps	27136	24.64 s
7 x 300 1:2	600 MHz	5-5-5-15 1.8V	8063 MB/s	5451 MB/s	58.0 ns	416.9 fps	26819	25.50 s
7 x 353 2:3	529.5 MHz	4-4-4-12 2.4V	8076 MB/s	6246 MB/s	56.3 ns	428.9 fps	26368	23.42 s
7 x 368 4:5	460 MHz	4-4-4-12 1.8V	8470 MB/s	6686 MB/s	53.5 ns	500.2 fps	29011	21.28 s
7 x 320 4:5	400 MHz	4-4-4-12 1-8V	7371 MB/s	5814 MB/s	61.6 ns	432.8 fps	26983	24.50 s
7 x 382 1:1	382 MHz	4-4-4-8 1.8V	6836 MB/s	6667 MB/s	61.9 ns	426.1 fps	25624	23.43 s
7 x 333 1:1	333 MHz	4-4-4-8 1.8V	5984 MB/s	5820 MB/s	69.2 ns	377.0 fps	24100	26.82 s
7 x 278 1:1	278 MHz	3-3-3-6 1.8V	5534 MB/s	5032 MB/s	89.0 ns	366.1 fps	23287	29.17 s
7 x 266 1:1	278 MHz	3-3-3-6 1.8V	5275 MB/s	4830 MB/s	94.5 ns	349.7 fps	23174	30.46 s

You would usually find a voltage scaling graph here, but the memory simply is not affected by any increase of voltage. It is completely driven by CL settings. Even changing it from CL4-4-4-8 to CL4-4-4-12 yields an improvement. This is great for people who do not have a mainboard with a lot of voltage tweaking options. Please note that each individual module overclocks different, the results here can only be seen as an indicator of performance.