We tested the Mushkin 128mb HSDRAM PC150 module on the following setup ;
Motherboard: MSI BxMaster i440bx CPU: Intel Pentium III Coppermine 700MHz w/ 100MHz FSB RAM: Mushkin 128mb HSDRAM PC150 running @ cas3, Apacer PC100 cas3 Video: ASUS v7700 GF2 32mb DDR HDD: IBM Deskstar 15.3gb 7200RPM ATA66 OS: Microsoft Windows ME Software: SiSoft Sandra 2000, 3DMark 2000 1.1
- SiSoft Sandra 2000 Memory Benchmark
Considering the speed of my aging PC compared to the SiSoft AMD Athlon 1GHz test system the Mushkin PC150 memory performed quite nicely. It in fact beat an SiSoft Intel PIII 1GHz test system using RAMBUS in FPU/Memory Bandwidth by a considerably margin according to SiSoft - amazing! I wouldn’t know exactly how valid this finding is though, so don’t quote me on it...
PC100 -vs- PC150
To show you the performance difference between PC100MHz and PC150MHz memory we have put some Apacer cas3 ram up against the Mushkin PC150 running at cas3 using SiSoft Sandra 2000’s memory benchmark feature.
It was obvious before we even began testing that the Mushkin PC150 memory would beat the Apacer PC100 memory (at least we hoped it would), the PC100 was beaten by almost 20% in both SiSoft Sandra tests. In theory the PC150 memory should have performed 50% faster than the PC100 memory because on paper PC150 is 50% faster than PC100 - go figure, but unfortunately due to hardware limitations this cannot be the case. The test findings were still quite impressive though I might add.
Include with the ram was a warning from Mushkin saying and I quote, "Some revisions of the MSI BX Master and 6163 (Pro) offer a tRCD setting of 3 in the BIOS. However, the BIOS switch does not work and the board defaults to tRCD of 2. In order to run HSDRAM-150, it is necessary to download WPCREDIT from http://www.h-oda.com and manually change the respective entry in the chipset." This basically means that on the MSI BX Master (the motherboard I’m currently using) needs to be modified so you can run the PC150 ram at cas2. I attempted changing the entry in the chipset as suggested by Mushkin and I didn’t have any luck, rather I didn’t want to stuff my board up changing the wrong entry. So for those of you which have a MSI BX Master or 6163 (Pro) you should take this into consideration when pondering whether or not to buy some Mushkin PC150 memory! This is why we didn’t include any testing of the memory running at cas2. Keep in mind that on any other motherboard Mushkin’s PC150 memory will be able to run at the faster cas latency setting of 2.
Conclusion
Overall I was quite impressed with Mushkin’s HSDRAM PC150 memory, the performance and quality were of a high standard and we didn’t experience ANY stability problems with over 24 hours of uptime. At $195 USD (around $350 AUD at time of publication) this memory aint cheap, but if you are one of those people who require the fastest and latest hardware and need some better memory to overclock their system, you will be quite impressed with Mushkin’s PC150 memory - Just like we were.
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