We began at 100Mhz (200MHz DDR) for testing, and went up until she wouldn't boot. To make sure that the processor wasn't holding us back we made sure and under clocked the chip by manipulating the multiplier such that it never ran higher than 800 or 900Mhz, which it was designed to do. We also ran with no PCI cards, as they could also tend to cause problems at higher bus speeds. While running with an AGP card can produce the same negative effect, we simply had to keep watch and try our best to not let that be our limiting factor.

To keep things simple we also ran each stick of DDR with a CAS setting of 2.5. In addition, we had the RAM set to normal mode on both boards. We used SiSoft's Sandra memory benchmark, version 2001se, as it measures the sustained memory bandwidth. Numbers are reported in MBs (megabytes) per second, which means that higher is better. Please take note that the first number reported is Integer ALU & second is Float FPU.

Also, please note that both mainboards also support separate voltage settings for the memory. We simply ran at the highest settings (2.7V) to maximize any overclocking potential.

The Verdict

Clearly, the best choice would be the Crucial DDR. Unlike the Mushkin RAM which had some major problems with the ALi based chipset. Not only that the despite Mushkin advertising their RAM as overclockable the crucial was able to overclock higher, and they don't even support overclocking the way Mushkin does. Despite all that, Crucial's RAM is also about $10 cheaper than the Mushkin.

by Ryan Wissman

<< Previous