Crucial Ballistix DDR2: The New DDR2 Standard?
by Steve Carmel & Wesley Fink on February 21, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Crucial PC2-6400: Gaming Performance
Several games were chosen to help determine the stability of Crucial's Ballistix DDR2-800 memory:
Quake 4 was used, set to ultra quality, and benchmarked with results in frames per second (FPS) at 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 resolutions. Comparisons were made between stock, default settings, and using a front side bus speed of 335 times a multiplier of 13. The EVGA 7800 GTX KO video card was not overclocked during these tests, as memory stability was the main key.
Valve Software's HL2 Lost Coast turned out to be an effective memory test, and it was set to maximum quality, with HDR effects on, at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions. The old standby, Doom 3, is more sensitive to memory, thus it was benchmarked in game at 1024x768 resolutions. Finally, Far Cry was configured with max quality settings. Our benchmark test utilized 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions.
The results are in the table below. No glitches, hitching or artifacts occurred during game testing at these settings.
Futuremark's PCMark05 was configured to run with the full test suite option and delivered an overall score of 7432 PCMarks. The memory test suite score was 5897. These tests were also run at a front side bus speed of 335 with a 13x multiplier as used in the gaming tests above. The entire test results can be seen here.
Synthetic 3D benchmarking programs such as 3DMark06, 3DMark05, 3DMark03, and 3DMark 2001 SE were run, with no problems even at high clock speeds using this memory.
Several games were chosen to help determine the stability of Crucial's Ballistix DDR2-800 memory:
Quake 4 was used, set to ultra quality, and benchmarked with results in frames per second (FPS) at 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 resolutions. Comparisons were made between stock, default settings, and using a front side bus speed of 335 times a multiplier of 13. The EVGA 7800 GTX KO video card was not overclocked during these tests, as memory stability was the main key.
Valve Software's HL2 Lost Coast turned out to be an effective memory test, and it was set to maximum quality, with HDR effects on, at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions. The old standby, Doom 3, is more sensitive to memory, thus it was benchmarked in game at 1024x768 resolutions. Finally, Far Cry was configured with max quality settings. Our benchmark test utilized 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions.
The results are in the table below. No glitches, hitching or artifacts occurred during game testing at these settings.
| Quake 4 | Default settings | 335 x 13 = 4361 MHz |
| 1024 x 768 | 145.0 FPS | 171.5 FPS |
| 1280 x 1024 | 123.7 FPS | 152.7 FPS |
| 1600 x 1200 | 117.1 FPS | 122.5 FPS |
| Lost Coast | Default settings | 335 x 13 = 4361 MHz |
| 1024 x 768 | 73.0 FPS | 85.3 FPS |
| 1280 x 1024 | 56.9 FPS | 61.0 FPS |
| Far Cry | Default settings | 335 x 13 = 4361 MHz |
| 1024 x 768 | 70.65 FPS | 76.66 FPS |
| 1280 x 1024 | 66.32 FPS | 70.76 FPS |
| Doom 3 | Default settings | 335 x 13 = 4361 MHz |
| 1024 x 768 | 83.1 FPS | 127.3 FPS |
Futuremark's PCMark05 was configured to run with the full test suite option and delivered an overall score of 7432 PCMarks. The memory test suite score was 5897. These tests were also run at a front side bus speed of 335 with a 13x multiplier as used in the gaming tests above. The entire test results can be seen here.
| PCMark05 | 335 x 13 = 4361 MHz |
| Memory Read 16 MB | 9274.5 Mb/s |
| Memory Read 8 MB | 9573.61 Mb/s |
| Memory Write 16 MB | 6768.83 Mb/s |
| Memory Write 8 MB | 6734.91 Mb/s |
Synthetic 3D benchmarking programs such as 3DMark06, 3DMark05, 3DMark03, and 3DMark 2001 SE were run, with no problems even at high clock speeds using this memory.
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leexgx - Saturday, February 25, 2006 - link
you Must understand the CPU that tomshardware got was an Test CPU, thay realy should of not done an benchmark as the CPU it self was not fully working and the DDR2 ram that was used was could only work at DDR2 666 and the timeings was stuck at 4-4-4-12 and may have been limted by the broken DDR2 contorler in it as well (you realy should look at it and not trust the resluts at all and thay have told you that its not to be trusted as well as its not an retail product as toms' stats)basicly at the time when P4 came to use DDR2 the timeing speed of DDR2 was silly DDR1 would out perform DDR2 this is why amd have not gone to DDR2 as ram speeds are now to the point where it will not be an bottle neck (and Ram price between DDR1 and 2 are not that must £10-£40 $40-$80 depending on size)
testing the Ram performance in am P4/P5 system is not usefull any way as it can not use it (get some intresting resluts when AM2 fully comes ot)
(the date is 06/06/06 when it comes out)
my self i am going to stick my AMD X2 3800+ 939 and mobo and 2Gb of ram in me server (board is dieing caps are leaking on this P4 mobo) and get AM2 when 65mm fabs come out for AM2 and fast ram by then (and some good mobos)
all that will probly be end of year i can wait my 3800+ X2 is running at 2.4ghz (basicly 4600+X2 as the ram is running at DDr480 as well)and its happy and cool keeps me happy
Jedi2155 - Sunday, February 26, 2006 - link
DDR1 outperforming DDR2 wasn't the main reason AMD didn't go to DDR2 right away. The main reason (if you read AMD's lawsuit against Intel's marketing practices) was because Intel created separate consortium to design DDR2 with the memory manufacturer's with the full intent of keeping AMD out of the loop. Thus AMD was a year or 2 behind Intel in developing the memory controller for DDR2 (as they couldn't see the specs till it was finished) nor did they have any input in the design of the specification.And thus DDR2 sucks more than it should had AMD been involved :)
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
The AM2 platform launches on June 6, 2006 (6/6/6). Those aren't memory timings.Spacecomber - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
I'll admit that I mostly skimmed through this article, but since much of the data seemed to be in the form of screenshots that are too small to be easily legible without cliking on them to get the enlarged version, I found it hard to get a quick glimpse of what this article might have to offer.I would much prefer results to be presented in traditional graphs and tables, instead.
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
What is the information about the AMD CPU doing in this test?Too much copy/paste?
JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - link
Yeah, that does seem out of place.Authors also need to go back and recheck their MB\GB , MHz\GHz labels. I sure don't want any 4.5MB\sec RAM.
96redformula - Tuesday, February 21, 2006 - link
My faith in crucial is gone.