Corsair XMS Xpert RAM

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. SANDRA consists of a set of information and diagnostic utilities that can provide a host of useful information about your hardware and operating system.  We ran SANDRA's Memory Bandwidth test on our AMD powered test bed with three different brands / types of memory installed.

Performance Comparison with SiSoft SANDRA 2005 Raw Bandwidth

Throughout this review, we'll be comparing the Corsair XMS Xpert TWINX1024-3200XL memory kit, to another pair of Corsair modules, and Kingston's HyperX PC3500 RAM. This first group of tests were run with the memory timings set by the SPD. The SPD (Serial Presence Detect) basically gives the motherboard's BIOS simple information about speeds, timings, manufacturer, etc. In this configuration, the Corsair modules were running with 2-2-2-5 timings, and the Kingston modules at 2.5-3-3-8. As you can see, SANDRA's memory bandwidth benchmark had the Xpert modules in the lead at just over 6GB/s, followed very closely behind by the Corsair Pro sticks, and then the Kingston HyperX modules.

Performance Comparison with PCMark04 Overall Memory Score

For our next round of benchmarks, we ran the Memory performance module built-into Futuremark's PCMark04. For those interested in more than just the graphs, we've got a quote from Futuremark that explains exactly what this test does and how it works...

"The Memory test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the memory subsystem. The memory subsystem consists of various devices on the PC. This includes the main memory, the CPU internal cache (known as the L1 cache) and the external cache (known as the L2 cache). As it is difficult to find applications that only stress the memory, we explicitly developed a set of tests geared for this purpose. The tests are written in C++ and assembly. They include: Reading data blocks from memory, Writing data blocks to memory performing copy operations on data blocks, random access to data items and latency testing."

PCMark04's memory performance module reported the same performance trend as SANDRA, with the Xpert sticks on top, followed by the Pro DIMMs in second place, and Kingston's HyperX right behind.

In-Game Performance Comparisons System Memory Affects Framerates?  You Betcha!

We continued our testing with some low-resolution Doom 3 tests. Despite the fact that this is a game benchmark that can be used to test the relative performance of video cards, frame rates are strongly influenced by processor speed and available memory bandwidth, especially at low resolutions, which is how we ran the tests to get the frame rates listed below.

Our custom Doom 3 benchmark confirmed the synthetic SANDRA and PCMark scores. In this test, Corsair's XMS Xpert RAM finished in first place, with a framerate just shy of 162 FPS. Kingston's HyperX modules trailed them by about 4.5 FPS, and Corsair's Pro sticks came in approximately 3.5 FPS behind. Not monumental differences in performance by any means, but the Xpert sticks were technically the fastest here.