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Performance
These tests run using:
AMD
Athlon 3000+ (Barton) CPU
MSI K7N2G-L nForce2 Motherboard
Corsair
TWINX-3200LL and XMS3200 CAS2
I
suppose the first question we need to ask is "can
it do what it says it can?" and the short answer
to that is an absolute "yes!". In fact it
made it to 206MHz (412MHz DDR) at 2-2-2-6 which I
find absolutely staggering to be honest. Relaxing
the timings and boosting the voltage a little didn't
help a whole lot taking me to just 422MHz (211MHz
DDR) though I'm as certain as I can be at this stage
that the memory wasn't actually responsible for this
limit. Certainly a little more experimentation is
called for and that's the next step.
Running
200MHz @ 2-2-2-6 T=1
Remember
that these results also reflect the fact that the
CPU was running at 2.31GHz as opposed to the stock
2.16GHz. It should also be noted that the regular
XMS3200, along with our Crucial 2700 and TwinMOS 3200
failed to run in pairs at these overclocked settings.
PCMark
2002
TWINX
- Barton 3000+ ~ 13 x 166MHz
TWINX
- Barton 3000+ ~ 11.5 x 200MHz
SiSoft
Sandra 2003 ~
Memory Bandwidth
Barton
3000+ ~ 13 x 166MHz
TWINX
- Barton 3000+ ~ 11.5 x 200MHz
The
problem of course so far as nForce/nForce2 is concerned
is that unless your running your memory at the same
speed as your processor your performance will suffer.
This means that running at your TWINX at 400MHz is
pretty much pointless unless you have your processor
running at 400MHz too, and with the fastest AMD processor
currently available running at only 333MHz that means
overclocking it. At the moment it seems the real benefits
from such high performance memory simply can't be
realised on the AMD platform as both VIA's KT400 and
NVIDIA's nForce and nForce2 offer reduced performance
at 4000MHz DDR settings.
3DMark03
memory
@ 400MHz, 2-2-2-6
memory
@ 266MHz, 2-2-2-6
Conclusion
If
you were to buy from The
Overclocking Store you'd pay £126.00 +VAT
for two 256MB sticks of XMS3200 running at 2-3-3-6-T1
(at 400MHz) so on this basis you're paying an extra
£9.00 for improved latencies and the guarantee
they'll happily run together in your bleeding edge
dual memory channel board and this is a fair return
in any currency. Testing and quality control on all
Corsair's memory is stringent but on their XMS memory
it's extra tough while for the TWINX it borders on
hardware cruelty. A lifetime warranty goes some way
to showing how much faith Corsair place in their product
and why the charge more than some vendors.
So
do you need TWINX? Well, to be honest no you don't.
For the AMD platform it's a product before its time
and only those able to hit a FSB of 200MHz on their
CPU are going to see any benefits from TWINX over
the regular XMS product. That said for the extra £9.00
you're covered for when AMD do spring a 400MHz FSB
processor on us or you can opt for the better matched
PC2700 version if you're not intent on overclocking.
On
single memory channel AMD boards you'll certainly
benefit from the improved latency at 400MHz but so
far there isn't a chipset that can run memory at 400MHz
and still outperform the same memory running at 333MHz.
Let's hope VIA's soon to be introduced KT400A can
improve this. Again the benefits come from overclocking
and if TWINX can hit 400MHz at 2-2-2-6-T1 then you
can imagine there's some headroom available with a
little extra juice and a 2-3-3-6-1/2T setting.
Despite
being a product ahead of its time for the AMD platform
we really need to run this memory through more platforms
to show its true worth, and we will. KT400A may be
the revelation for AMD though if current rumors hold
true it won't be, while Intel will certainly stretch
the performance limits this year so maybe Corsair
has a well thought out strategy behind them.
Make
no mistake Corsair TWINX is faster than anything we've
seen here before but there's no doubt we haven't seen
it at its best yet. What we need now is a platform
that can make it break a sweat. Nice stuff!
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