Test System Setup

Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Supplied by Intel)

Motherboard: eVGA nForce 680i (Supplied by eVGA)

Hard Disk: 500GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA (Supplied by Seagate)

Graphics Card: MSI Radeon X1950 Pro (Supplied by MSI)

Cooling: Gigabyte Neon775 (Supplied by Gigabyte)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Drivers: nVidia nForce Platform Driver 9.53, ATI Catalyst 6.11 and DX9c

Our memory test system makes use of the new nForce 680i chipset. We use this motherboard due to its ability to overclock the memory asynchronously to the FSB, allowing us to determine the memory's overall max rating without the CPU or other system components bottlenecking the system.

We tested the Crucial Ballistix memory at 800MHz DDR using the SPD timings (5-5-5-15) and then we also ran the memory at 800MHz DDR with the tightest timings we could attain out of the RAM, which proved to be 4-4-4-12 at 800MHz DDR.

Lastly we put the memory to its max we could get out of it using SPD timings. We managed to get a maximum speed of 1102MHz DDR with the DRAM voltage at 2.4v - maximum speed at 2.2v was 1080MHz.

Let's get this show on the road and see how the Crucial memory compares against some of the latest high-end RAM from Corsair which is also at its default and maximum OC speed.

SiSoft Sandra

Version and / or Patch Used: 2007

Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk

Product Homepage: http://sisoftware.jaggedonline.com/index.php?location=home&a=TTA&lang=en

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SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.

At 800MHz the Crucial and Corsair manage to score the same results as they both use the same default timing profiles.

With the timings lowered on the Crucial we see a slight increase in memory performance. At max memory clock the Corsair manages to win due to its higher clock rate at overclocked speeds.