On the socket AM2 AMD processor test bed we're only interested in seeing how high we can go with the memory running 1:1, as running with other dividers puts the overclocking bottleneck elsewhere and not with the system memory. The DDR2 RAM latency must run at its lowest possible setting, as quick access is more important to the CPU design. Just for arguments sake, we will also be conducting overclocking tests to see how high the memory will go with lax timings (5-5-5-15), although we will only benchmark the system with the tight memory timings mentioned above. Let's get started!

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the Corsair XMS-2 PC2-8500 C5 memory test system was configured for benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this pair of DDR-2 memory is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system processor: amd Athlon64 FX-62 Clock Speed: 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz 10 x 276 MHz = 2.76 GHz Motherboards: Foxconn C51XEM2AA (NF 590 SLI) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: 2x 512MB Corsair CM2X512-8500 2x 1024MB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 2x 1024MB Patriot PDC22G8000+XBLK 2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-8500C5 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 nVIDIA Forceware NF4 9.34 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Benchmarks: Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 SiSoft Sandra 2005 PCMark05 3DMark05 Doom 3 Quake 4 Battlefield 2

Office Productivity	Source: Zdnet

Business Winstone 2004 runs real applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete these activities to produce its performance scores.

Content Creation Winstone 2004 is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running top, Windows-based, 32-bit, content creation applications in Windows XP.

Office Productivity
Business Winstone 2004:	Points	Ranking
2x 1024MB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 (200/800)	36.2
2x 1024MB Patriot PDC22G800+XBLK (200/800)	36.3
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 (200/800)	36.3
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 (200/800)	36.8
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-8500C5 (200/800)	35.7
2x 512MB Corsair CM2X512-8500 (200/800)	36.2
2x 512MB Corsair CM2X512-8500 (276/1104)	36.9
Content Creation 2004:	Points	Ranking
2x 1024MB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 (200/800)	46.3
2x 1024MB Patriot PDC22G800+XBLK (200/800)	46.7
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 (200/800)	46.2
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 (200/800)	47.3
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-8500C5 (200/800)	48.6
2x 512MB Corsair CM2X512-8500 (200/800)	46.8
2x 512MB Corsair CM2X512-8500 (276/1104)	49.3

At stock speeds the 1GB Corsair memory kit performs on par with the other DIMMs, a computer really doesn't need 2GB of memory to do office tasks. Overclocking does boost performance slightly, but it would not be noticeable in this application.