Testing:
The test system used for comparison purposes consists of the following components:
• ASUS A8N-E motherboard
• AMD Athlon-64 3200+ processor
• 128MB Gigabyte Radeon X600XT
• 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 hard drive
• Windows XP Professional, SP2 with all current patches
Testing the 2048MB XMS PC3500LL Pro Dual Channel DDR Kit was done head to head with another set of Corsair's light up memory, a 1024MB XMS PC4000 Pro Dual Channel DDR Kit. The default timings of this other kit are 3-4-4-8, so the low latency PC3500 obviously has an edge at 2-3-2-6. The image below shows that not much has changed in the physical design between the PC4000 Pro Kit (reviewed in February 2004) and this kit. Except for a higher gloss finish on the heatspreader, the product specific label is all that distinguishes the two kits.
With the PC3500LL kit installed for the first time (and set to just 200 MHz) I entered the BIOS to see what timings were reported by the SPD data. Corsair rates this kit for 2-3-2-6 1T, and the ASUS BIOS reported 2-3-2-6 2T. I made the one adjustment to make the BIOS match the published specifications, and got on with testing. The system booted right up and I began checking the stability, performance, and seeking the overclocking maximum.
Overclocking:
Overclocking on the test system described above proved to be a bit disappointing. Regardless of CPU settings, memory settings, or any of the handful of other settings available, the ceiling was found to be at a fairly meager 230 MHz (460 MHz DDR). Considering the memory is rated for 438 MHz DDR, we did get a bit of an overclock, and to my delight the tight 2-3-2-6 1T timings could be held all the way to 460 MHz. Further overclocking trials with the 1024MB Corsair PC4000 Pro kit and a 1024MB Crucial Ballistix PC3200 kit also maxed out at exactly 460 MHz DDR, so it is obviously something other than the memory holding this back.
As a secondary test of the overclock, the PC3500LL Pro kit was installed on an Abit IS7-G Pentium-4 motherboard, which allows the PC4000 Pro kit to overclock to 500 MHz DDR without much of an effort at 3-4-4-8 2T. The PC3500LL matched the performance, and was able to hit 500 MHz as well, with better timings of 3-3-3-6 1T at 2.8V.
Once the overclocking performance on the test system was established, three levels were set for testing, and the PC3500LL Pro and PC4000 Pro were run through a series of benchmarks. The three levels were at 400 MHz DDR (system default speed), 438 MHz DDR (memory default speed), and 460 MHz DDR (maximum overclock). As mentioned previously, the PC3500LL was able to run the same timimgs, 2-3-2-6 1T, at all speeds. The PC4000 was able to come down to 3-4-4-7 1T for all tests run, and both sets of DDR were run at 2.8V.
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