Quake III Arena	Source: ID Software

Quake III Arena is a First Person Shooter (FPS) that revolutionized gaming as we know it. Using multiple light sources and having graphics textures that can fill videocards, even after 3 years it's still able to bring a cutting edge system to its knees.

Quake III Arena Fastest demo001
	FSB	FPS	Ranking
1.	256MB Corsair XMS PC2400 (171 MHz CL2)	311.2
2.	256MB OCZ PC3000 (195 MHz CL2.5)	323.1
3.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (133 MHz CL2)	269.4
3.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (178 MHz CL2)	326.4

Quake III Arena Fastest nv15demo
	FSB	FPS	Ranking
1.	256MB Corsair XMS PC2400 (171 MHz CL2)	87.4
2.	256MB OCZ PC3000 (195 MHz CL2.5)	89.1
3.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (133 MHz CL2)	78.1
4.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (178 MHz CL2)	92.3

Quake III here just loves the Mushkin DDR. In fact even the OCZ PC3000 DDR can't keep up with the Mushkin even though it's running at 195 MHz FSB! It does seem odd since the OCZ offers more memory bandwidth according to Sandra. Then again Sandra is only theoretical.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein	Source: ID Software

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a relatively new game benchmark. However, RTCW takes up where Quake III left off and continues to form the basis of the first person shooter system stressing that QIII has become a hallmark for. Based upon the Quake III engine, RTCS is obviously going to be quite taxing on even a top end system. Higher numbers denote faster frames per second (FPS), and hence, better performance.

RTCW Normal 640x480 atdemo6
	FSB	FPS	Ranking
1.	256MB Corsair XMS PC2400 (171 MHz CL2)	65.8
2.	256MB OCZ PC3000 (195 MHz CL2.5)	66.3
3.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (133 MHz CL2)	60.7
4.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (178 MHz CL2)	67.4

RTCW Normal 640x480 atdemo8
	FSB	FPS	Ranking
1.	256MB Corsair XMS PC2400 (171 MHz CL2)	183.7
2.	256MB OCZ PC3000 (195 MHz CL2.5)	187.1
3.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (133 MHz CL2)	168.1
4.	256MB Mushkin PC2100 (178 MHz CL2)	190.4

It's not surprising that RTCW paints the same picture as Quake III since it's based that exact same engine. Here the Mushkin High Performance DDR gets numbers we've never seen before in our labs with RTCW.

Conclusions:

Mushkin has certainly come back into the DDR fray with some very nice memory here, and coupled with the AMD AthlonXP 2000+ it is a deadly fast force. While not having as much theoretical memory bandwidth as the OCZ PC3000 because of the faster memory timings, it is often times able to beat the (overclocked) PC3000 memory and beat arch rival Corsair.

We were glad that Mushkin took the extra time and added some swanky aluminum heat spreaders to the RAM since they did get quite hot during testing. It's nice to see a company go the extra step for their customers.

About the only complaint we have with the Mushkin Enhanced High Performance DDR RAM is the name. It's a pain in the butt to type out ;-) We're not sure if all of the Enhanced RAM Mushkin produces will run at 178 MHz FSB with the memory settings maxed out, but hopefully they will come close so that this particular stick is representative of the whole lot.