Overclocking:
Given the no frills appearance of these modules, I had fairly low expectations for overclocking, and pretty much any gain was going to exceed them. The following test system was used to evaluate the 2GB of Transcend DDR2-800, and the overclocking friendly BIOS found on this motherboard should allow them to do as well as possible.
» ABIT AW8D Intel 975X motherboard
» Intel D-840 3.2GHz Dual Core processor
» Tuniq Tower 120 CPU cooler
» Hitachi Deskstar 500GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» Enermax Liberty 500W power supply
» Windows XP Professional SP2
I was pleasantly surprised to see these modules climb higher and higher without issue... I started out overclocking in baby steps of 5 MHz increments above the 200 MHz (800 MHz DDR2) default speed, but abandoned this approach quickly. I then went straight to DDR2-900 speeds at the stock timings of 5-5-5-15, and the system was completely stable. I then bumped the system up to DDR2-950 at the same timings and just 0.05V more voltage, and all was still well. The next stop was DDR2-1000, and although I got into Windows just fine, the system was not stable. Maintaining the 5-5-5-15 timings and the slightly increased voltage of 1.85V, I eventually found the stable ceiling to be at DDR2-960. Leaving the timings alone and setting the voltage as high as 2.00V offered no improvement in this range of speeds.
With a bit of tweaking and the right voltage, these modules could quite possible crack the 1000 MHz barrier 100% stable. I was surprised to have any overclocking success, and the fact that a 20% boost was possible with no real tweaking was quite impressive. Something that might help with overclocking is some better cooling. Many may find heatspreaders to be a gimmicky feature with minimal necessity, but slapping a set on these memory modules might be worth the money!
Transcend offers a lifetime warranty on these memory modules, and even though the website may imply the opposite, I was told that "even if you use the modules for overclocking, the warranty is still good (lifetime)." Very nice!
Benchmarking:
Benchmarking consisted of running the test system through two memory-centric benchmarks, one gaming benchmark, and then running a test to see how calculations are aided by different memory configurations. The benchmarks listed below were all run on the 2GB (2x1024MB) Transcend DDR2-800 at default speed (800 MHz DDR2), as well as at 900 MHz and 960 MHz. A 1GB kit (2x512MB) OCZ Platinum DDR2-667 kit was run through the same tests at default speed (667 MHz DDR2).
» Everest Ultimate Edition 2006 Memory Benchmark
» SiSoft Sandra 2007 Memory Benchmark
» 3DMark06
» Super Pi / Mod1.5 XS
Everest Ultimate Edition 2006 Memory Benchmark:
The Everest Ultimate Edition 2006 Memory Benchmark provides four sets of results: memory read speed (in MB/s), memory write speed (in MB/s), memory copy speed (in MB/s), and memory latency (in ns). Higher values are desirable for memory read, write, and copy speeds, while lower values are desirable for latency.
Despite offering double the capacity, and 20% more speed at default settings, the Everest results were negligibly higher with the Transcend kit. Start overclocking and the potential of the Transcend kit becomes more interesting. Keep in mind these results are all at the default timings of 5-5-5-15 and without a heatspreader. Spend some time tinkering with the settings, and add some cooling to these modules, and who knows what you might see.
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