Benchmarking (continued):
The next two tests were actually conducted to simulate how memory impacts performance in two of today's more popular games. The playable demo versions of Quake 4 and Battlefield 2 were both analyzed using a program called Fraps. Fraps can monitor/record the frame rate in video games, and this functionality was used to create an average frame rate value for the two games tested (higher is better). Once the games were loaded to the scenes to be tested, Fraps was enabled and allowed to record for 300 seconds as I tried to duplicate the same motions / interactions each time.
Quake 4 - This game was tested on the "Air Defense Bunker" map with the following settings; 1024x768, High Quality, and no Anti Aliasing. The numbers presented in the chart below were automatically generated by Fraps based on the 300 seconds of monitoring. These results are what really caught my attention, as just switching from Corsair to Kingston memory netted an increase of 2 to 3 frames per second, even in the overclocked conditions. That doesn't sound like much, but it translates to about 10% at the speeds this graphics card is capable of. With a higher end graphics card, an increase of 10% may not be realistic, but a decent increase should be expected!
Battlefield 2 - This game was tested in the same manner, with Fraps calculating an average frame rate value over a 300 second monitoring period. The game was loaded to the "Gulf of Oman" map with the following settings; 1024x768, High Quality, and no Anti Aliasing. From the results below, we see that the Kingston kit offers an even greater boost this tie around. While running at 400MHz or 438MHz, we pick up 2-5 frames per second, or an increase of up to 20%. Overclocking to 460MHz did up the frame rate a bit, but the Corsair kit scored better at this speed.
In the end, testing showed that the Kingston GB PC3200 Dual Channel DDR Kit is well configured for excellent performance at default (DDR400) speeds. Although Kingston discourages it, slight overclocking provided a nice boost, but extreme overclocking wasn't possible, and even at 460 MHz the performance and stability was significantly degraded.
|
|
