Benchmarking (continued):
SiSoft Sandra 2007 Memory Benchmark:
SiSoft Sandra 2007's suite of benchmarks includes one that provides two results related to memory performance. The values are provided in units of MB/s, and higher values are better.
As you can see from the data above, this benchmark also did not care whether the test system had either the default speed 1GB DDR2-667 or the 2GB DDR2-800. Sandra's results were negligibly higher with the Transcend kit in lieu of the OCZ kit. The latency drop no doubt contributes to the scores being so close. Overclocking does help the Transcend kit nicely though, and with a 20% overclock to 960 MHz the performance bump is linear and also 20% higher.
3DMark06:
The 2006 edition of 3DMark offers a sampling of tests that are used to develop a composite score to reflect your system's potential gaming performance. The results are presented in unitless "Marks", and higher is better. The graph below shows the results from the test system with the display set to 1280x800 and No AA.
The results here were interesting as the Transcend memory could never compete with the OCZ memory. No matter how high the Transcend modules were overclocked, they could not compete with the slower and smaller (but lower latency) OCZ Platinum kit.
Super Pi / Mod1.5 XS:
Super Pi is a simple program designed to calculate Pi to the number of decimal places as selected by the user. In the process, it keeps track of how long it takes, and this time can be used to benchmark the processing power of your system. Lower values are better, and the graph below details the results.
Although this may be more of a CPU test, it does show that switching from the OCZ to the Transcend memory kit at the same CPU clock speed has a small benefit. The calculation was completed 1.55% faster at the same CPU speed, and this improves as the system is overclocked.
