Budget Graphics Strike Back: Revenge of the RAM

DDR333 3:4:4:12 Graphics Performance

After we saw the results for our CL3 PC3200 tests, we wondered what would happen if we plugged in some even slower, lower bandwidth PC2700. Using 3:4:4:12 2T timings with our 333MHz data rate RAM, we pushed the budget factor even further. The format is the same as our previous section, showing performance increase when moving from the slower RAM to our fastest.

With this test, we see results that vary more per game. Doom 3 and Half Life 2 show that TurboCache cards with more RAM suffer less from slow system memory. UT2K4 and Wolfenstein put the lower memory cards on top of the 64MB card.