Test Setup

Performance

In the first test we evaluate how these modules do at their default settings, to establish a baseline performance value.

Next we tried how much further we could overclock at their default voltage and timings settings. A very impressive 750 MHz could be achieved. This is a very good result, demonstrating that the memory has a lot of headroom.

The next test demonstrates the maximum overclock possible on this memory at 2.4V. This RAM managed to break the magic 1 GHz mark, 1024 MHz to be precise, with 4-4-4-10 timings no less! But for some reason the memory did not overclock any further using looser timings, even to 5-6-6-16 there was no improvement. I was very happy that these modules could reach over 1GHz, especially on 667MHz dimms! I would have expected this kind of performance from 800MHz dimms.

Now it's time to find out how much the timings can be tightened. We found that at 2.4V the timings could be tightened to 3-2-2-4, which is the tightest timings the motherboard will allow. Unfortunately to manage this, 2.4V is needed, and the memory will not clock any faster than 540 MHz without becoming unstable at these extremely tight timings.

There are two tests that i carried out, both at 667MHz, but with slightly different timings; 3-3-3-8 Vs 3-3-3-12. I did this to demonstrate how slight the difference is because the default TRAS timing on these modules is 12, whereas most manufacturers use TRAS 8 when CL3 is used for their stock frequency. As you can see there is very little performance lost by going with TRAS 12, but it is an unusual set of timings for sure!

For further comparison, the test "JEDEC DDR2-533" shows a generic DDR-2 module running at JEDEC standard timings.