Review: Mushkin 1GByte (2x512MB) Level-II PC3200 RAM - RAM - HEXUS.net

System setup and notes

Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.

Mushkin 1GByte (2x512MB) Level-II PC3200 RAM (2-2-2-5 @ DDR400, and 2.5-3-3-7 @ DDR500)
OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev 2 1GByte (2-2-2-5 @ DDR400)
Crucial Ballistix PC4000 1GByte (2x512MB) (2-2-2-5 @ DDR400)

Other components

Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Northwood S478 CPU run at 3.0GHz (15x200MHz FSB)
ABIT IC7-G i875P Canterwood motherboard with PAT-enabled BIOS
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, 8x AGP, 350/1000
Pioneer 105 DVD-RW
Western Digital 160GB (WD1600) 8MB cache hard drive
Dell P991 19" monitor

Software

Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0b
Intel 5.1.1002 driver set
NVIDIA ForceWare 61.77 drivers
Pifast v4.1 to 10m places
ScienceMark 2.0
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
DOOM 3 - 1024x768 - High Quality - Demo 1
HEXUS XviD media encoding test

Notes

Three sets of extreme performance memory up against each other. The basic setup consisted of a Pentium 4 3.0GHz Northwood CPU run at 15x200MHz FSB. To make things interesting, I also ran the Mushkin pair at 250MHz FSB (DDR500) with timings of 2.5-3-3-7 timings. To keep things in parity, I dropped the CPU's multiplier down to 12x, such that we're looking at:

3006MHz - 15x multiplier - 200MHz FSB - DDR400 - 2-2-2-5 timings.

3006MHz - 12x multiplier - 250MHz FSB - DDR500 - 2.5-3-3-7 timings.

What I'm attempting to answer is, given a similar overall clock speed, whether having a higher FSB and higher latencies (1:1 CPU-to-RAM ratio) is better than a comparatively lower FSB and tight timings. On to the tests.