Date: |
November 17th/06 |
Price: |
320.99 |
Sponsors: |
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Author: |
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Editor: |
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Score: |
9/10 |
Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 PC2-5300 Testing
Testing
Last time that we did a review on a DDR2 set by Crucial, Intel was the only
option for this setup. But, since the new AM2 socket by AMD, they have broken
into the DDR2 situation as well. Below is the setup that was used for these
tests.
Motherboard: Asus M2N4-SLI
Processor:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Video Card: Crucial Radeon X1600 XT
256MB PCI Express
Hard Drive 1: Western Digital WD2500KS
Hard Drive 2: Western Digital WD2500JB
Power
Supply: XG Vortec 600
For testing in this review, we are using Everest Ulimate Edition to actually
check the read, write, copy and latency of the RAM at its different timings. We
are also going to look at the performance increases that have been seen between
some games that where played on previous system. These increases, of course, are
due to both the RAM that Crucial has passed on to us to review, as well as the
video card that they sent along with it.
The timings that we used in this review are as follows: 5-4-4-15 (333 MHz),
4-4-4-12 (266 MHz), and 4-4-4-10 (200 MHz).
I will admit that I have been very impressed with this RAM. It has increased
the performance of so many applications and such that I drool on my keyboard at
times. Well, maybe not that much, but you get the point. The one thing that sort
of gets me at times is the fact that I play a decent (a little) amount of Need
for Speed Most Wanted. It is actually the one PC game I play on a regular basis.
When I first loaded it up, it was on the default settings for the game which
are, for the most part, actually pretty low. Well, lets just say I almost could
not play it at those settings, things where responding too quickly. So, I had to
actually raise the settings (Oh, the horror, I know) to be able to play
resonably well.
To test the difference between what the folks at Crucial sent me, and what
other options out there for the folks at home. Morgan, another one of us here at
LAN Addict was kind enough to send me a stick of their DDR2 RAM to test, as
well. Once FedEx brought this new RAM and we were able to get it into the system
to test it, I found out that, unlike Crucial, where I was able to find the
timings for three clock speeds using both Everest and CPU-Z, this third party
RAM only gave us one clock speed. So, to keep it fair, we only used the one it
provided to us in testing.
 
So, as the above numbers definitely show us, there is much higher performance
out of the RAM that Crucial sent us and, depending on your budget and the price
point, I would go with Crucial's DDR2 over this third party product.
Because we wanted to see the increased performance in both game playing and
the system itself, I ran 3dMark05, which, yes, is mostly a graphics benchmark.
But, everything plays a part, as we all know, and the difference between systems
was more than double. Very nice performance boost for me to play whatever I
really want in the future.
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